Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

I got some interesting comments on the last post about Linux desktops. I realize that I haven’t talked about this in a while, and I’m not sure I’ve actually ever articulated this completely on this blog. So here goes.

I got involved in Linux a long time ago. I was a professor at the time, and a nonprofit organization wanted to get on the web, and give some of their staff email, and at the time, colleges and universities were the only organizations that had easy access to the internet, and virtual hosting companies cost a fortune, way beyond what a nonprofit could afford. The date was sometime in 1995. We set up a little box in the corner of my office, and loaded several piles of floppies containing the Slackware distribution onto this box. After a few hours (as opposed to the few minutes it would take now) we configured that server to hold a website and serve email. The old site is still up on the Wayback Machine. I co-administered that box for a few years. Eventually, they got a T1, and moved the server in-house. I left academia to do that sort of thing with nonprofits full time. In fact, that experience, and the work I did around it with that organization, was the first step into this whole nonprofit technology field.

What I learned about Linux back then was that it was a way (along with the help of a college) for a nonprofit organization to get on the web easily and relatively inexpensively. It leveled the playing field, so that an organization without many resources could do what at that time, required a lot of resources. In many ways for me, the most important aspect of free and open source software is that it does just that - it levels the playing field so that people and organizations with few resources can have access to quality tools to do what it is they need and want to do in this software-driven world.

I’ve learned a lot about FOSS since then, of course, and the other aspects of FOSS have also come to be very important to me. I do agree, fundamentally, with the four freedoms laid out by the Free Software Foundation:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

And ultimately, in Michelle’s perfect world, all software, all content, all hardware, etc. would all be free (libre). But we don’t live in Michelle’s perfect world, we live in this world. This broken, very imperfect, very problematic, and quite capitalist world.  And in that world, I am a realist.

I am ecstatic, and do many happy dances a day, that there are people who write and support free software. I think of myself as one of them (Besides working with NOSI, I’ve been involved in several projects over the years in varied capacities.) The number of situations where one can still argue on a functional and cost level that proprietary software is a better bet get fewer and fewer. I could easily argue that for the overwhelming majority of places you need an operating system, the free and open source alternatives are better (if you count the BSD core of the Mac OS. If you don’t, it’s still the majority.) There are innumerable really great free and open source desktop applications that can run on any OS, and there are more every day.

And, surprisingly to me, I’m quite happy that lots of big corporations are now really getting into free and open source software support. I think, ultimately, it’s when big corporations want to ditch Windows on the desktop that the biggest strides will be made in Linux desktop usability and support. That’s a tide that will really lift all the boats.

Bottom line for me: free and open source software is about leveling the playing field, free access, community benefit, and community control allows this. That’s why I got into it in the beginning, and that’s why I’m sticking around, and doing what I can, even though I’ll be using my Mac (with, of course, a lot of free software applications on top.)

I’m doing a webinar on Linux Desktops next month, and it’s making me think a lot about my own experience using Linux on the desktop, and where I think things are going. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ve heard my various sagas around using Linux on the desktop. I migrated to making it my primary desktop about a year ago. I have had varied problems, from issues of software integration, video problems, wireless issues … The list is getting very long.

And, guess what? I’m giving up. At some point, when I’ve saved up enough pennies, I’m going to buy a Mac laptop again. I’ve basically switched to using my Mac mini for just about everything except the bit of systems admin and coding I do, because it’s just so much easier to set up things on Linux for that type of work.

What happened was I felt like I was wasting too much time on things that should be easy. It should be easy to plug in a new monitor. It should be easy to get wireless, it should be easy to add a new printer. It should be easy to play a DVD. These things are far from the fault of Linux. On the Windows side the hardware manufacturers make proprietary drivers for Windows, and very few make drivers for Linux, or open source their drivers so that Linux developers can use them. On the Mac side, Apple controls the hardware, so there never is a problem with it. (And, of course, there are plenty of peripherals that don’t work with Macs.) And then there are the proprietary codecs and DRM, that are all tied to an OS.

So what does this mean for Linux on the desktop? This experience has made me think a lot about where organizations should think about using Linux, and where they should steer clear.

My theory is that where Linux is going really work is in dedicated devices built from the ground up to run Linux, and used for relatively limited purposes. The eePC is a great example, as are cell phones, media players, etc. This is where Linux will shine. And, of course, there are some other situations where Linux also shines: kiosks, internet cafes, computer labs and email/web workstations. There isn’t good reason, at this point, *not* to use Linux there. I think it can also work for the folks who perhaps use laptops as their primary machines, and don’t do anything except email and web. And, of course, always, for developers. I probably will always have a Linux desktop around, even if it ends up being a virtual machine, for the varied (small, at this point) development projects I have going. It’s just dead easy to use Linux for development - easier than using the Mac, even though it has BSD as it’s basis.

Where is Linux not a good idea? Most creatives and knowledge workers who are not developers. There are just too many things we need - too many cool new peripherals, we want to manipulate too many kinds of data and media, etc. And we don’t (at least I don’t) want to spend to much time getting all of that to work. And there still are lots of newer software and services that aren’t coming out in Linux versions (for instance there does not exist a decent usable twitter client for Linux - gwitter is not very usable at all, and the others just don’t work.) And, of course, designers need software that just don’t have high enough quality open source alternatives yet. I think that for a while, at least, Linux won’t be a good desktop option this broad group of people. Which is unfortunate, and I hope it changes. Linux has made huge usability strides in the past few years, as has open source software in general, so I think the future is still bright.

Beth, of course, suggested this, and I’m jumping on her bandwagon. I realized, in being introduced to Edupunk, that I have been doing it for, oh, almost 20 years now.

In 1989, I joined the faculty of Hampshire College (and stayed for 10 years). Hampshire’s motto is “Non Satis Scire” - to know is not enough. From their website:

Some of the features that distinguish Hampshire from more traditional liberal arts colleges include student-designed academic concentrations; an active, collaborative, inquiry-based pedagogy; an interdisciplinary curriculum; and a narrative evaluation system.

Sounds a lot like Edupunk, doesn’t it?

But in the nonprofit realm, my perspective on helping nonprofit organizations with technology issues has a lot to do with client empowerment, learning based on what’s needed at the moment, and active collaboration.

I got a chance to test this out in a more orchestrated way (as opposed to the usual consultant/client interactions) when I facilitated/taught an OpenOffice.org “untraining” earlier this month at Google HQ in NYC (some more details are on the Google Blog.) I learned a lot. The unconference/camp model of learning about technology issues is really great, but falls a little short when dealing with a specific tool, and an audience that is mostly unfamiliar with it. So the model that I am coming up with is a combination of that model, and what I would call an “inquiry based” model - helping people in a more structured way come up with specific questions and problems before the event, and then use the event to collaboratively answer those questions, and solve those problems. The questions and problems are generated exactly from the needs of the participants - what do they need to do?

Anyway, I do hope at some point to have a chance to do this kind of thing again. And I think it would be great to have an nptechpunk mini movement!

That’s what I said to Tompkins Spann, of Convio, when he told me last week (after I duly signed the requisite NDA) that Convio was going into the donor database business by building an app on top of Salesforce.com. Actually, I didn’t use the Battlestar Galactica expletive, I used the one you’re more familiar with. :-)

Convio is launching the new application, built on top of the Force.com platform. It is named, as of now, Aikido. It has the kind of functionality you’d expect from a donor database.

It seems in a business sense, to be a brilliant move. Leverage the power of the open platform of Salesforce.com, and do the work that nonprofits (and consultants) have been having to do to bang Salesforce.com into shape as a donor database. And make it reasonably priced. They are starting with a “charter” program - a few nonprofit organizations, to iron out all of the varied issues, both technical and logistical, I imagine.

This ups the ante major league for Blackbaud, for sure, as well as other long time desktop donor database providers. It may, depending on pricing, even give the open source CiviCRM a bit of competition. And it means an interesting dance for those in the nonprofit salesforce community. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding - we’ll find out over time how this app works, and whether organizations like it. But the whole CRM field just got more interesting.

• The Tides Foundation is accepting applications for the 2008 Antonio Pizzigati prize, a $10,000 annual award for outstanding contributions to software in the public interest. The competition, judged by a panel of national leaders in public interest computing, is now entering its third year. The application deadline for this year’s prize: September 1, 2008. Last year’s winner was Barry Warsaw, lead developer of the awesome Mailman mailing list manager.
• Ruby Sinreich is a new phenomenon! You go girl!
• NTEN keeps surprising me with cool stuff for nonprofit tech peeps. And I’m on the board! Check out the book club, reading Media Rules!: Mastering Today’s Technology to Connect with and Keep Your Audience, by Brian Reich and Dan Solomon.
• Check out the new images and videos of Android, the open source phone. And the video with the kids is very cute. Wait for this, or buy an iPhone? I might wait, depending on carriers…

Today, someone on the progressive exchange list asked about a tool called Rapleaf. A story about Rapleaf in Clickz (a newsletter for online marketers) says this:

Rapleaf allows you to quickly and inexpensively find out the social networking footprint of those you’re marketing to. Just send the company your e-mail list and tell it what social networking sites those on your list are using, their demographics, the numbers of friends they have, how many widgets they’re using, even their interests. Rapleaf digs into the usual social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), as well as newsgroups, commerce sites (like Amazon), review sites, forums, and news groups, and even searches the general Web to find out where your people are and what they’re doing online.

An interesting conversation ensued on the list - with some arguing that this was a problematic thing. I actually thought this could be quite useful for organizations to figure out how to allocate sparse resources in the Web 2.0 space. But that’s not the point of this post.

I realized that one of the most important things that we can do is educate the organizations we work with (as well as individuals) about privacy issues and data. When is data public? When is it private? How do we know? How can we assure privacy?

It is important to understand that Rapleaf is just gathering public information on people, based on their email addresses. It is an inevitable result of our desire for social networks, as well as our desire for information to be portable (like in RSS feeds.) What’s important is that we understand what is actually public, and what isn’t, and how to keep what we want to be private, really private.