I am the Product Development Manager for an ASP company that has been developing an ASP model for non-profits for a few years now (OK- thinking about it for a few years- developing it for the last year). The truth is, my development team has always felt that open source was the way to go with this- I just never knew exactly when/how/if to go about it.
We've had a lot of progress, and like the author (inquirer?) noted above, unless there is some input from all you open source developers that changes something (which is what I hope will happen) it will emerge as a proprietary model that the company currently employing me is in control of. If I can get some good arguments, I'll bet I can get everything we've done switched over to open source and refocus the company's business model on support etc. But I'll need all your help.
Here's some motivation. The truth is, the NPO's who need these technologies most are the ones who can afford them least (I know, it's already been said). These businesses writing web-based software will market it mostly to big corporations (like Wal-mart and IBM etc.- all of which have big volunteer / community action arms that need to be managed). That leaves the little group in the kitchen wanting to clean the river out of the loop. Most of these smaller organizations spend all their time going through two drawers in their filing cabinate- the drawer w/ all the community opportunities, stating what kind of volunteers they need, and the drawer with all the volunteers who have registered, along with what skills they have. The ma and pa NPO spends hours and hours a week matching the two up and then calling the volunteers etc.
We've estimated that a nice affordable piece of software (or online app for free) that matched appropriate opportunities to the interests of registered volunteers- we would be saving at least 10 hours a week for that small NPO. Here's the beauty- They're not going to use that 10 hours they saved to sit on their duff and watch TV- the people who usually run these are the type that are proactive and motivated enough that when they have 10 extra hours a week, they'll use it to find more ways to serve the community. A few hours of programming may in the end equal thousands of volunteer hours created...
Anyway, enough of _my_ preaching on the subject. Help me put a workable business model together here- it's not going to be by the book OSS, because the paradigm is a little different, as has been pointed out. We do this, and I'll open up all our source (lots of php running on apache on a debian linux, lots of DHTML / javascript and a couple of applets etc. etc.- all very open sourceable. Currently Sybase as the backend, though we're keeping a close eye on Interbase...).
Joseph Wecker
Product Development Manager
Samaritan Software, LLC
joew@samaritan.com
Professor Touretzky told me jokingly in an email a while back that if he had a better singing voice, he would have sung the source code in front of the judge. All joking aside, though, technology is already far enough that the DMCA is meaningless (as has been pointed out). Forgive me for giving the ultimate example:
I wrote a song about DeCSS. The lyrics are the source code for deCSS in plain english (descramble mp3). If I perhaps was a little more technical in the rendering of the song- If I had actually sung the hex for a tar'ed source code, it wouldn't be that big a deal (at least for our friends at MIT) to write some software that would read it and then run it. The song is then illegal, right?
OK, but really worse case scenario. I remember reading (here on/., I think) about a brain implant that is allowing a paralyzed man to move a mouse cursor around on his monitor. Well, in singing the DeCSS song, I've started to kind of memorize it. It's a pretty easy algorithm (nothing like an md5 hash or anything). So, if I get one of those implants, am I not even allowed to think about how to decrypt a DVD? The scary thing is, the technology is already here! (I know this scenario has holes, but I think it demonstrates the unusability of the DMCA in my mind)
I really didn't appreciate the judge's comments "Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement."
(I know this is going to sound like Katz a bit): Since when was assassinating someone on par with a corporation losing market value? That's wrong.
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I am the Product Development Manager for an ASP company that has been developing an ASP model for non-profits for a few years now (OK- thinking about it for a few years- developing it for the last year). The truth is, my development team has always felt that open source was the way to go with this- I just never knew exactly when/how/if to go about it.
We've had a lot of progress, and like the author (inquirer?) noted above, unless there is some input from all you open source developers that changes something (which is what I hope will happen) it will emerge as a proprietary model that the company currently employing me is in control of. If I can get some good arguments, I'll bet I can get everything we've done switched over to open source and refocus the company's business model on support etc. But I'll need all your help.
Here's some motivation. The truth is, the NPO's who need these technologies most are the ones who can afford them least (I know, it's already been said). These businesses writing web-based software will market it mostly to big corporations (like Wal-mart and IBM etc.- all of which have big volunteer / community action arms that need to be managed). That leaves the little group in the kitchen wanting to clean the river out of the loop. Most of these smaller organizations spend all their time going through two drawers in their filing cabinate- the drawer w/ all the community opportunities, stating what kind of volunteers they need, and the drawer with all the volunteers who have registered, along with what skills they have. The ma and pa NPO spends hours and hours a week matching the two up and then calling the volunteers etc.
We've estimated that a nice affordable piece of software (or online app for free) that matched appropriate opportunities to the interests of registered volunteers- we would be saving at least 10 hours a week for that small NPO. Here's the beauty- They're not going to use that 10 hours they saved to sit on their duff and watch TV- the people who usually run these are the type that are proactive and motivated enough that when they have 10 extra hours a week, they'll use it to find more ways to serve the community. A few hours of programming may in the end equal thousands of volunteer hours created...
Anyway, enough of _my_ preaching on the subject. Help me put a workable business model together here- it's not going to be by the book OSS, because the paradigm is a little different, as has been pointed out. We do this, and I'll open up all our source (lots of php running on apache on a debian linux, lots of DHTML / javascript and a couple of applets etc. etc.- all very open sourceable. Currently Sybase as the backend, though we're keeping a close eye on Interbase...).
Joseph Wecker
Product Development Manager
Samaritan Software, LLC
joew@samaritan.com
Professor Touretzky told me jokingly in an email a while back that if he had a better singing voice, he would have sung the source code in front of the judge. All joking aside, though, technology is already far enough that the DMCA is meaningless (as has been pointed out). Forgive me for giving the ultimate example:
/., I think) about a brain implant that is allowing a paralyzed man to move a mouse cursor around on his monitor. Well, in singing the DeCSS song, I've started to kind of memorize it. It's a pretty easy algorithm (nothing like an md5 hash or anything). So, if I get one of those implants, am I not even allowed to think about how to decrypt a DVD? The scary thing is, the technology is already here! (I know this scenario has holes, but I think it demonstrates the unusability of the DMCA in my mind)
I wrote a song about DeCSS. The lyrics are the source code for deCSS in plain english (descramble mp3). If I perhaps was a little more technical in the rendering of the song- If I had actually sung the hex for a tar'ed source code, it wouldn't be that big a deal (at least for our friends at MIT) to write some software that would read it and then run it. The song is then illegal, right?
OK, but really worse case scenario. I remember reading (here on
I really didn't appreciate the judge's comments "Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement."
(I know this is going to sound like Katz a bit): Since when was assassinating someone on par with a corporation losing market value? That's wrong.
Joe