2010/9/17 Hugo Roy hugo@fsfe.org:
how do we, Free software supporters and Free software NGOs, can cooperate more with other NGOs to explain them:
- the values of freedom carried by Free Software
- the inherent advantages in terms of control and security over their
information
- the collateral advantages in terms of hacktivism online, etc.
What do you think is the answer? Are you also working with other NGOs not related to the software field?
Wikimedia may be a helpful example to use. It is not a software-related charity, but an educational one. However, because it's full of FOSS nerds, it has a strong free software policy [*]. This extends to a lot of the stuff a charity uses - e.g., WMF contributes paid development effort to CiviCRM.
Wikileaks is a news organisation rather than a charity per se, but Julian Assange's paranoia started well before he needed it - software such as Rubberhose, specifically for NGO workers operating in dangerous situations.
Suggestion: a page about software useful for charities, and email wikitech-l when a first draft is up asking for other stuff WMF uses and that WMF workers know about even if they don't use it.
- d.
[*] WMF used Java when it had not been entirely freed yet, and the image servers were until recently on Solaris 10 for the sake of ZFS (I believe this is changing).