I'd say the first thing is for organizations to practice what they preach, and stop using proprietary formats like .doc and .xls for their own documents.

Well, I agree, but I wish to take this a little further, and perhaps from individual/community/grassroots perspectives...

as advocates for open source and open standards, I am hoping we can coordinate to educate the public and pressure govt and other public entities to make a commitment...

Hard problem.... :(

If you get any forward motion, you know I'm right there with you :)

It's going to be tough to put those kinds of restrictions on organizations and public entities. I've been thinking of it a little differently -- maybe something about contributing software back to the community.

Well, I am suggesting a tack that might broaden awareness on the issue, and would counter a prevailing norm/practice which is negative. Frequently govt agencies in the US, especially at state level, and in some large cities have foisted requirements upon grantees or subcontracting NPOs/CBOs... to use certain applications as a de facto or mandated standard... if they backed an interchange standard rather than a particular software solution we'd be in better shape. (Gathering we agree on this, but just restating my experience, and the broader connections to 1) social source and 2) open standards)

I agree that they could back a more, well, standard standard rather than default to the product/format produced by a specific application.

How would that work? I mean, the fact is the mandating agency would also have to push the use of tools that produce those standards and that might entail training etc. It's late and I suspect I'm making this harder than it needs to be...

Not clear on your question. Maybe we both need some sleep :)

It's a small change for a gvmt to require rtf instead of doc, isn't it? And doesn't require much training either.

I'ld like to hear whether anyone thinks the basic idea of the Outside Now project falls within the scope of "open source" (either in a "legalese" sense or also in a more colloquial/common sense way) -- and if not, what could/should be done to move it closer in that direction?

Thanks,

nmw

In my experience, anytime you ask folks to go beyond using the default, you run into problems. Training really is an issue for most folks. I also think that, as documents are increasingly traded for purposes of revisions, it makes going to other formats even harder (I've found nothing supports version tracking in a single document as easily as MS Word and would really welcome input on that).

I've often wondered how work processes could be changed to address the above and get other additional benefits. For example, a wiki could solve some of the above. And if you're training anyway...

well obviously as you know Micheal I am very much in support of waht you are talking about here.

I am giving free lectures on why NPO's should consider Open Source. And I have noticed that several foundations are now requiring that software built with funds must be open sourced though not necessarily open developed.

And our local EFF-Austin will be doing penguin days to get them started. (yah I pulled that one back out of the fire and now it is on again)

as well as low cost software application classes where we actually install the software on "their" machine at the beginning of class. I am purposely though using OS that installs on Mac, Linux and Windows.

I could see a changing of the default config's as a part of that class - I mean I often forget to save things as rtf when I am bouncing btn the mirad of computer OS's that I own.

I think to get the NPO's to come over we need to convince foundations to make a a requiste of funding. And then have some hand holding in place to "lead them to the light". ;-)

I think the foundation path is a not a very fertile one to tread. Just open sourcing code via license does nothing to drive adoption or to create, as Larry Lessig puts it, innovation at the edge of the network.

But if control still rests with the people building the software (I have to call and ED to get permission to use the software), then open source doesn't do much.

Foundations either need to invest in open source as a strategy or wait for open source ideas to emerge in the areas they care about and then agressively support those emergant efforts.

When is the Austin Penguin Day, I'd love to join you.

Is rtf "open"?

How about a developing some workspaces (glossary? definitions? information resources? planning? ...?)

That is true the foundations step is not complete but it is a step in a good direction IMO. Afterall What if someone dicated the OS or the specific codebase to use... that would also be really limiting. it is more highlighting a concept and encourage NPOs to pursue it more.

But then for my org I am trying to implement it in such a way that is very reuseable. I love what they are doing with Drupal for example. but Drupal can't handle the amt of traffic with interaction I am expecting... I mean even plone and zope aren't handling it either in the examples I have seen. I want to do a new backbone tech... now how limited would it be if a foundation told me exactly what to use and how to do it?

The Penguin day is going to be set after SXSW since I can't see the end of the tunnel untl then. But we are looking at April And I will keep such things posted. Also watch www/eff-austin.org ! As I will be throwing it Via that group...

Cheers, Silona

David Geilhufe said:

I think the foundation path is a not a very fertile one to tread. Just open sourcing code via license does nothing to drive adoption or to create, as Larry Lessig puts it, innovation at the edge of the network.

But if control still rests with the people building the software (I have to call and ED to get permission to use the software), then open source doesn't do much.

Foundations either need to invest in open source as a strategy or wait for open source ideas to emerge in the areas they care about and then agressively support those emergant efforts.

When is the Austin Penguin Day, I'd love to join you.

Silona I Bonewald said:

but Drupal can't handle the amt of traffic with interaction I am expecting

Drupal is built on the same basic technology as Yahoo (PHP/MySQL). Are you expecting to exceed that level of traffic? :)

In general sacalability is less a function of the CMS than it is of the underlying architecture (webservers, hardware, memory, apache, db connections, etc.)

Big Drupal sites generally are operating at ~100k users and one transaction per second. Are you guys exceeding that? Drupal starts bogging down with a lot of nodes (pieces of content), but a bunch of the high volume sites have released patches for high volume drupal installations.

Some specific info on Drupal scalability: http://drupal.org/node/43438

Actually, there are a number of very large Drupal sites: Linux Jornal Linux Gazette The Onion The Howard Dean for President Campaign (and more:http://drupal.org/node/23176)

I would be shocked if a properly configured Drupal site would be overwhelmed by anything short of the top 20 or so sites on the web.

David Geilhufe said:

Some specific info on Drupal scalability: http://drupal.org/node/43438

I have read that document and done my research. I am aware of my site design and its issues. Please read my profile as I have done large CMS implementations in the past and have worked with large DBs since dbase 3+. Thank you for your concern.

Silona I Bonewald said:

Thank you for your concern.

Sorry, didn't mean to suggest you were not aware. Can I ask what the project is and why Drupal will not work?

I'm a techie business guy (no coding) so I'm always looking for an opportunity to understand a little better...

the business model is huge and I am preparing a land grab idea...

So yahoo would not be an apt comparison but tribe.net, myspace or livejournal would be. just add in some linked-in and yahoo groups in regards to functionality aspects...

Blogging with a social network, activism and community tools.

So while I may not have as many visitors as yahoo, I will have very active editor style visitors generating and updating lots of content. I expect around 150,000 but easily could be more and must plan for that. The money people I have talked to thinks the market is much larger than that. And my business model breaks even at the 27,000 user point.

Drupal just can't handle that. To be honest neither can plone/zope. Though I am considering php. And it will be open source as transparency is a goal of the organization.

I have just started putting up portions on the plan online at www.leagueoftechvoters.org And if you notice that the fundraising site is done in drupal. As I really enjoy it. I have 10 volunteer editors right now and drupal has made it easy to manage. But I can also throttle it so it can handle be boingboinged and slashdotted. So I consider myself to be a fan of Drupal and all the neat tools and such that everyone is creating. As you can see from the site I have been playing with the modules.

But with a site composed mainly of editor style traffic... drupal would be a nightmare. Onet was done with plone and zope was also slowing down significantly if too many users are online at the same time. I mean seriously we only have around 11K signed up last I checked. And ugh the interface issues don't even get me started. I have to check to see that you responded in this discussion. how old school.

It's the problem with too much dynamic content. And I have been taking with php coders at certain large companies about the issues they are handling...

it's interesting being in this NPO space. Everyone freaks at my budgets and ideas. But having come from the for-profit world people normally don't flinch at 3-5 mi dollars CMS's, I just don't get it.

facinating really. I mean if you want the most bang for your buck both monitarily and morally, a sponsored OS development seems the way to go. Different personality types I assume. I don't care about owning IP for my ideas - I just care that they are setup to do the most good and to be shared with credit. Course that's why I love Creative Commons. Can't wait to meet some of those guys and gals at the SXSW party I am throwing in conjuntion with EFF and my org, LoTV.

that's very interesting, Silona

interesting link nmw pos 5

I addressed similar ideas in On the Fly Buzz -- although I don't understand some of the issues on a more techninal level, another concern I would have is security.

Have you tried typo3 (http://www.typo3.com/)?

Shahani

Silona I Bonewald said:

the business model is huge and I am preparing a land grab idea...

[deleted]

Drupal just can't handle that. To be honest neither can plone/zope. Though I am considering php. And it will be open source as transparency is a goal of the organization.

[deleted]

I am an active member of the FOSS community in Sri Lanka. We are highly involved in FOSS advocacy initiatives. In fact, many external people have noted that Sri Lanka is one of the most active countries when it comes to FOSS advocacy!

However, despite this highly enthusiastic FOSS community, and the high degree of awareness we have managed to generate in the public sector, we have realized the FOSS & open standards adoption is still low!! Investigating further into this problem, we discovered one of the main reasons behind this was the lack of companies in Sri Lanka that would offer support for FOSS applications such as OpenOffice and the lack of companies that offer FOSS-based solutions. Many public sector officials like to "feel assured" of the presence of a strong company that would immediately offer support if they need it instead of having to rely on a community of people (this is why they prefer to continue to use proprietary products - even though the customer support provided by these companies are essentially a myth).

So, two of us from the FOSS community in Sri Lanka decided to address this problem - we quit are very good jobs and started up a (for-profit) company to provide support for FOSS applications as well to provide FOSS solutions for the government and public sector (going through frustrating tender procedures etc.)! So far it has been an amazing ride filled with trials & tribulations...

Why a for-profit company? Because a non-profit entity is not readily accepted for this purpose by official government and public sector entities. In other words, we had to be the equivalent of Microsoft in Sri Lanka, heavily backing & advocating FOSS solutions. Our biggest issue right now is that we need more seed capital to grow fast.

Anyway, this is the unique way in which we decided to address the problem of lack of adoption of FOSS & open standards in the public sector in Sri Lanka.

Shahani

Michael Maranda said:

Who is interested in promoting adoption of open source and open standards?

I'm especially interested in publicly funded entities using or encouraging the use of open standards formats (and open source software), and I believe that no publicly funded entity should require or be required to follow a propietary standard for the exchange of information.

I have been pleased to hear of govt. led adoption of open source around the world, and the adoption of Open Document standards in Massachusettes.

How might we work together to promote and coordinate from the grass-roots and grass-tops to educate legislators, policy makers and the general public on these issues? What campaigns might we foment?

Shahani Weerawarana said:

However, despite this highly enthusiastic FOSS community, and the high degree of awareness we have managed to generate in the public sector, we have realized the FOSS & open standards adoption is still low!! Investigating further into this problem, we discovered one of the main reasons behind this was the lack of companies in Sri Lanka that would offer support for FOSS applications such as OpenOffice and the lack of companies that offer FOSS-based solutions. Many public sector officials like to "feel assured" of the presence of a strong company that would immediately offer support if they need it instead of having to rely on a community of people (this is why they prefer to continue to use proprietary products - even though the customer support provided by these companies are essentially a myth).

This sounds (looks) like a valuable insight to me. I can imagine many non-tech organizations who won't go the FLOSS route because of lack of support. Thanks for sharing this.

So, two of us from the FOSS community in Sri Lanka decided to address this problem - we quit are very good jobs and started up a (for-profit) company to provide support for FOSS applications as well to provide FOSS solutions for the government and public sector (going through frustrating tender procedures etc.)! So far it has been an amazing ride filled with trials & tribulations...

Courageous move, I wish you every success.

And thanks for TYPO3 link.

Silona I Bonewald said:

But with a site composed mainly of editor style traffic... drupal would be a nightmare. Onet was done with plone and zope was also slowing down significantly if too many users are online at the same time. I mean seriously we only have around 11K signed up last I checked. And ugh the interface issues don't even get me started. I have to check to see that you responded in this discussion. how old school.

Silona,

O.net does not use Plone code at all, nor does it use Zope. O.net only borrowed Plone's graphic design and Zope's ZODB. Most of the bad usability, is, unfortunately, the result of O.net's own design & implementation choices. Poor performance of O.Net does not reflect in any way on the performance/scalability of Zope & Plone.

cheers, jon

I agree with Jon that the usability issues shouldn't be attributed to Plone nor to Zope. If you want to take a look at the omidyar.net code to see what we used and how we pulled it together, the tarball can be found here.

I would be interested in this group's take on opensource hardware design [of ASICs, SoCs, multicore application specific servers, etc] ... I am particularly intrigued by what I see at OpenSPARC.net, but also open-silicon.com, esilicon.com, keyASIC.com, Incyte's ChipEstimate.com ... big changes comin'

I have my own biased take on this as someone who's been employed in the industry for too long ... see new scribblings at http://markbruns.livejournal.com/