After 15 years running a successful business, Ed Schipul released to the world his source code for his proprietary software, Tendenci. Foreseeing the impact of the cloud, mobile, and GIS, Ed knew he had to change his business model or become irrelevant. Open source was the path to future sustainability and innovation.

There were however, seemingly insurmountable challenges. Tendnci 5, the first open source platform for nonprofit organizations, had to be completely rewritten from .Net, ASP and SQL to Python, Django and PostgreSQL. From Github to cloud software, he had to choose all the tools to put in place to support his rewritten product and new architecture.

Lessons learned from the transition include the importance of testing and how to make your application’s architecture more scalable as well as what open source tools have proved to be most valuable. Ed will share his reasons for thinking that all of this is the best choice for both the product and the development community.