Open Food Source

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= Open Food Source is Software for local food networks

URL = http://www.openfoodsource.org/


Description

"Open Food Source is a web-based software package, designed for the coordination and management of local food systems where many producers sell to many customers in an online periodic/cyclic marketplace.

Unlike many online ordering systems, the periodic/cyclic nature of ordering means the marketplace has specific ordering periods followed by coordinated all-at-once delivery of products. Typically, shoppers will have from one day to several weeks to order products. Then producers have from one to several days to prepare goods for delivery. Finally, products are delivered to customers by a variety of methods which varies by local implementation and policy.

Unlike subscription-based solutions, Open Food Source is a stand-alone package that can be installed on an organization’s own web site and managed by local personnel to serve the specific needs of its members."


History

"Open Food Source began life as Local Food Coop software, which was originally commissioned and built for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (OFC). Under the GPL license, Oklahoma made the software freely available at www.localfoodcoop.org.

Among early adopters of the software were the Nebraska Food Cooperative (NFC) and Idaho’s Bounty (IBC). Shortly, independent development and customization at each of the three cooperatives forked the software, which was finally resolved into two major versions: one for OFC and one for the other cooperatives.

Even though the Local Food Coop site belongs to OFC, non-OFC updates were made available for download there. This included "Green Tomato" versions v1.4.5 through v1.5.4.

Open Food Source provides a home for the branch of software initially developed for IBC and NFC and which has since been deployed in at least a dozen other online cooperative ventures around the world. With the change in name, the software is being reversioned to v0.8.0, which otherwise would have been v1.6.0 of the Local Food Coop software. Of course, Open Food Source will continue to be GPL licensed and available for free download and use."