Peter Lewis asked: [...]
As a result, I've been asked to send them some information on Free / Open Source Software which will help to inform them in making decisions about their new strategy and procurement. So, can anyone recommend a good briefing note or two which would be suitable? Ideally it would be aimed at voluntary / public sector organisations in the UK and accessible by general management (not IT specialists), though other good materials would also be useful.
Great! My fellow cooperators at Bristol Wireless co-ran a Social Source conference a while ago which might have some useful info http://www.bristolwireless.net/wiki/index.php/SocialSourceSouthWest but I can't find any of the materials online. I've just asked and will feed back any reply. Paul Webster has offered me his slides on "implementation in the VCS" - can I forward them off-list if needed?
IMO, the big problem with promoting FOSS to the third sector is that lots of UK government funding is wasted propping up a few hostile organisations that claim to be agnostic and independent but have entrenched legacy publishers as much as they can and excluded new entrants from forums. I lamented about that sort of thing at http://www.news.software.coop/why-is-public-and-charity-money-paying-for-the... back in April. So well done for getting a vol org interested!
Most of the relevant funded FOSS-related publications like FOSS.CIAC and FOSSVCS seem to have gone out-of-date and then offline, as is usual for funded work which gets released various Non-Commercial and No Derivative licences which make them hazardous or unusable to IT support businesses.
http://www.iosn.net/publications/foss-primers seem OK for the public sector, but maybe not great for the third sector.
If there's nothing out there and anyone has a bushel of funding, I'm sure software.coop, BristolWireless, FossBox, maybe M6-IT (not sure of its state) could start something sustainable.
Hope that helps,