About two months ago, I was contacted by my colleague Leif Utne. He and Jon Warnow – both Web of Change alumni – have started an experiment in crowd-sourced funding for an incredibly important technology project: WiserEarth. I signed on immediately.

Here’s an e-mail from Leif about the project:

WiserEarth is an amazing resource, a global index of over 110,000 NGOs (and growing). But it sorely needs an API so we can all develop apps to display and interact with that data through our own sites.

That’s why Jon Warnow (of 350.org), myself, and nearly 2 dozen other progressive technology and activist leaders have launched this effort to crowd-source the $10,000 WiserEarth needs to finish developing their API. Just 1 day into this campaign we have $875 from 18 donors.

Can you or your organization make a donation today at http://openwiser.org? Give whatever you can, even if it’s small. And spread the word.

A WiserEarth API would benefit the entire progressive movement. Let’s help make it happen!

cheers,
Leif

p.s. Neither Jon or I work for WiserEarth. We’re just big fans who want to see the site succeed. And we believe a robust API is key to that success.

I hope you might take a moment to join me in supporting the initiative.

If you are a client, or a colleague, you probably have heard me talk about Bricolage — the industrial-strength content management system. If you’re a client of mine, you probably know why I talk about it (in fact, you’re probably using it every day). And, if you’re a colleague, you’ve probably wondered what the hell I was going on about. Well, I figured it’s about time that I explain why some people claim that “Bricolage is quite possibly the most capable enterprise-class, open-source application available.”

Good article quoting the usual suspects over at Charity Village:

Unless you work in IT, you probably don’t give much thought to whether the software you use is licensed or open source, freeware or shareware; you just want it to work properly. But with the flexibility and affordability that open source and shareware programs can offer, some nonprofits are taking a closer look. Find out about the available software alternatives and whether they might be right for your organization in this week’s cover story at: http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/news/cover.asp

(Not sure how long that link will work, so let me know if it’s not working.)

Also fun to see that all those lessons on dealing with spam have finally paid off for Mark Greenspan. Mark was over for dinner on the weekend and couldn’t stop talking about the Net Neutrality panel (lots of familiar names there) that he is helping to program at Next Media 2007.

Collaboratively authored by Dmytri Kleiner and Phillip Smith

Last updated December 2004

Like many curious onlookers, you're probably wondering, Are free and open-source applications really able to meet our needs? or, Are open-source systems compatible with the software that our clients, partners and colleagues are using? The honest answer is yes. In the past two years, the pace of open-source desktop development has increased dramatically, the usability of Linux has been improved(http://www.relevantive.de/Linux-Usabilitystudy_e.html), the installed base of users has increased to an estimated 18 million (http://counter.li.org/estimates.php) and many large software companiesfrom IBM to Novell to Sun—have made significant commitments to develop on, integrate with and support open-source operating systems and software. Additionally, several "e-Riders" (organizations and individuals that support not-for-profit groups with technology) have started the process of moving their clients in the direction of free software (http://www.lincproject.org/), and many brands you experience every day, like the Government of Canada, CNN, Google and Yahoo, use open-source software to power their Web sites.