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Open Source Software for Peace Corps Volunteer?

Posted by Cliff on from the lending-a-helping-hand dept.

yemanja forwards along a request for a friend: "Justin Wiley, a young friend of mine is running an 'open source lab' in the Phillipines as a Peace Corps volunteer. He'd like to ask this question of Slashdot: 'Rhe NGO I am working with primarily supports governmental bodies. We are trying to convert them over to Open Source software, and have done so in some areas like putting Mandrake, Open Office, and Mozilla on all the desktops of the national economic development authority. However, it would be useful to have a body of applications providing more specific gov't. purposes. I'm looking for Open Source packages that can do things useful for the government, like inventory control, customer management, auditing, content-management, project management/monitoring, security, and so on. If I can make some of the kids into experts in these areas, it will be easier to get them a job in government, and easier to work in Open Source software if there are people trained in using and operating it. If you run into anything like that, let me know!' I know that cities like Munich have converted to Open Source, but I wonder if anyone on Slashdot has experience with this sort of question and can provide Justin with some specific suggestions that might be useful."

6 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Government Forge by cuzality · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your friend may want to check out GovernmentForge.org, a website "dedicated to providing free and open source software to state and local governments."

  2. Geek Corph by xanderwilson · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe get in touch with Geek Corps. They've got a parallel mission and maybe they've delt with this sort of thing.

    Alex.

  3. Seems to me by Otter · · Score: 3, Insightful
    First, keep in mind that you're there to help the Philippines and Filipino people, not to advance free software, right? It's not clear to me how making kids "experts" in software no one there uses in order to turn them into lobbyists does them much good.

    My suggestion would be to emphasize tools: scripting languages, SQL, XML, PHP, a GUI toolkit... (I'd suggest Qt, for a variety of reasons, but let's leave that flamewar for another time.) That seems like it will build their careers and the PI's IT capacity far more than teaching them how to use something randomly pulled off Sourceforge or Freshmeat.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  4. Real projects by dubStylee · · Score: 2, Informative

    One thing that is good with students is assigning real projects - have them pick a local community based NGO and build something for them - a CMS, or Blog (check sourceforge for software projects). The SQLClinic project is a management/tracking system for small psychiatric clinics but it or something like it could be useful to many small agencies and would serve as a model of what needs to be done at a larger level for larger agencies.

  5. Project Management ala dotproject. and my 0.02 by moorley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A few years back I remember doing the whole "convert the world to Linux thing" and was knocked off my stride by the need for project management, Gant Charts and required access to Outlook so Microsoft Project could be used. So sayeth the Project Lead!

    But at my newest job they are using dotproject. Works well, has Gant charts. If only I had it back then. Muhuhahhahhahaha!

    Seriously, check it out. www.dotproject.net

    As for the rest... Just my .02 but you are looking more at slow and easy deployment. There are lots of programs out there that can do it. I'll try to post another response with a few I've found on freshmeat.net

    The fun part won't be finding and/or implementing the software. The fun part will be convincing the folks to use it and making peace with whatever biases they have. It's not as cliche as "They'll choose Microsoft when given the choice" but more like "If they feel they have a choice, they will want to exercise it." And what they want may not necessarily be what is out there, open source, and that works reliable.

    So coming up with a list of applications that they should learn is kinda tough. It's going to change no matter what.

    Let the fun begin!

    Good basic linux skills will get them farther, let the vendors drive for a particular choice. Just make them good compu learners...

    --
    "Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me :)
  6. open source accounting software by benjyfrank · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sql-ledger, for basic accounting, 100% free.

    http://www.sql-ledger.org

    Based on ostgres and perl, runs on linux or windows.
    *****
    Compiere, for complex supply-chain management, CRM type stuff. Compiere is free, and you can download oracle for free for development/trial mode, but if you want to use it in production you have to shell out for an oracle license. $1500 I believe. There has been much talk of making compiere db independent, so you could plug in mysql or sql-server or whatever you want, rather than oracle, but that hasn't happened yet.

    http://www.compiere.org

    Hope this helps!

    --
    Karani -- Gebrauchte Notebooks am Checkpoint Charlie.