In today's world, whatever gives workers more control these days is a good thing. And Drupal website software does just that, because Drupal is "open source" or "free"--as in freedom--software.  It's NOT software which is owned and controlled by a single company. The differences between free/open source software and proprietary software are important, and every computer user should be familiar with them. Unfortunately, few people know the distinctions, and so we've created an analogy we hope will give average users a good understanding of why free/open source software is the way to go.

Would You Hire This Guy to Build Your House?

What makes free/open source software superior? To illustrate, imagine you want to build a new home. You find a guy to build your house, but he won't do it unless you accept the following restrictions:

• He is the only contractor who can ever work on the house--even after it is built. If you need a new addition or want to install new fixtures, you must use this same contractor who built the house.
• If it's inconvenient for this contractor to perform additional work for you, he won't do it.
• You are not allowed to make repairs yourself. You want to fix your own leaky faucet? Too bad.  Only this contractor can make repairs. You can't hire outside plumbers, painters, or carpenter.
• This contracator can't guarantee that repairs will be fixed quickly, or at all.
• If things don't work out with this contractor, your only option is to abandon your house, purchase another plot of land, and build a new home.
• If the contractor goes out of business (or simply refuses to work unless you give more money), you're barred from hiring another contractor  to work on your house.

Obviously, it would be insane to accept these restrictions. And yet, software users place these restrictions on themselves by using proprietary software.

Unlike free/open source software, proprietary software gives vendors all the control--not you, the user. Need a bug fixed? If you're using proprietary software, you're barred from hiring another programmer, so you have to beg the vendor to fix it. And if the vendor does fix it, you'll be charged an arm and a leg since the vendor knows you don't have the option to make the job available to other bidders. Or maybe you forked over $20,000 to vendors for a custom software solution only to find out that they don't have the capability to adequately support their own product; or perhaps the vendors went out of business or ended support for an old product line that you purchased from them.  Unfortunately, when these situations occur, you are forced to scrap all your work and start over again. 

Drupal Gives Control to Users, not Software Vendors
With Drupal, you have none of the artificial restrictions listed above, and you won't be at the mercy of software vendors. With Drupal, if you're not happy with your current vendor, a new one can come in and pick up where the last one left off. If your vendor is too busy or doesn't have the capability to fix a problem, you can hire someone else to get the job done. If you are a large union with an IT department, your own people can make changes to the software without help from the vendor.

Drupal Opens Up New Possibilities for Unions

Not only does Drupal give users freedom and control, it provides tremendous opportunities that would not even be achievable with proprietary software.

One huge advantage Drupal has over over proprietary software is that Drupal gives you the right to share software improvements with other unions.  For example, if a union hires a programmer or has a member of its IT team make improvements to Drupal, that union has the right to freely share and distribute that improvement with others, without having to pay hefty licensing fees.