Yesterday I had a prolonged discussion with Derek Williams about software for cemetery register maintenance and related data management. We share a vision for a low cost, easily adaptable and scalable software package tied to a standardised data schema. The standard, in my opinion, ought to be global not local. My view is that  open source software is well suited to our industry given that the majority of us run small office with relatively low resources.

Following on from that I muse about how things always seem to come together; over the last decade or so an acquaintance from South Africa and I have been talking about an open sourced  web based cemetery software application.  I heard from him this morning. He tells me that he has kicked the project off at http://cemeterydb.sourceforge.net - not much is happening there at the moment but I suspect it will soon enough.

However, my real reason for posting this is is to draw your attention to a new website which is helping the open source software push. It is http://www.click2try.com/ - Essentially,  you log on to the site. It has a growing offering of open source software that you can try out in  your web browser. The list is relatively small at the moment, but it shouldn't take long to grow.

NB: the definitive resource for open sourced software is, of course, sourceforge.net

All the best

Pierre