Community Open Source Program

From: "Greg Laudeman, Ed.D. via chugalug" 
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One way to think about local software infrastructure support is as a community open source program.

The Linux Foundation has produced quite a bit of information about open source program offices, including this guide: Creating an Open Source Program . Also, check out The Evolution of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) .

The intended audience is clearly major corporations. They are the only ones that have resources to create and sustain an OSPO. It's simply not practical for small and medium enterprises including local governments and public institutions.

A community data utility could adapt the LF's model to overcome this issue by aggregating demand, focusing on overlapping requirements, and selecting shared solutions that fit.

We already have a small example of this here with a guy working to deploy GnuCash for multiple local businesses. He's struggling because, while he's quite capable and reasonably technical, he doesn't have the depth of expertise required. (GnuCash is a bit old-school and written in C.)

A community data utility could serve as a shared, community-level OSPO to support efforts like this to select the best solutions, provide resources for development/deployment, and make sure efforts persist even if key folks drop out. And, of course, it would provide services/systems that could be used by multiple such efforts to reduce costs.

--
*Greg Laudeman, Ed.D.*
*Executive Officer and Principal*
*Eduity, LLC*
www.eduity.net
greg@eduity.net
706-271-5521