[FM Discuss] some good news (Please identify OSI)

Thu Oct 22 02:19:55 PDT 2009

I've  worked with Janet on and off for the past 8 years, and both 
herself and the rest of the Information Program at OSI are extremely 
well aware of the case for Open Source in  Open Societes. They are well 
versed in the political and the financial argument, and amongst funders, 
I know of few who support open source as much as they do.

I could mention a ton of projects they support and have supported in the 
past, but there are 2 buts.

but 1: The information program is a tiny part of whay OSI does, so the 
sack of money is nowhere as large as OSI's general sack.

but 2: While they support Open SOurce related projects, this is often in 
the form of workshops, trainings, documentation etc. The concern they 
have with supporting actual open source development is more of a concern 
with supporting development in general than supporting open source 
development specifically. From what i understand they've had some bad 
experiences supporting development of really good open source projects 
that ended up as failures because they didn't manage to build a 
community around them, and hence couldn't be maintained updated, and 
didn't see widespread use.

If I were to warrant a guess (informed guess at best, since i did have 
conversations with Janet about Booki), I would say that what changed 
their mind in this particular case will have been the existing community 
around FLOSS Manuals, as well as adams proven track record, i.e. the 
fact that booki is being based on something that works rather than on a 
specification document.

Just my 2½ cents worth of something...

cheers

/tomas

On 2009-10-21 03:42, Edward Cherlin wrote:
> Perhaps we can help Janet to make the case for Open Source in support
> of Open Societies. It's certainly a large part of the political
> movement, and of the OLPC approach to development through education. I
> can also provide some of the economics arguments. Not just financial
> benefits of efficiency, but social benefits as discussed in Welfare
> Economics.
>
> Hey, we could write a book!
>
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 16:33, adam hyde<adam at flossmanuals.net>  wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 10:18 +1100, Lachlan Musicman wrote:
>>> 1. Congrats/Awesome
>>> 2. Just for the record, it's actually "The Open _Society_ Institute",
>>> not the Open Source Institute. Soros and his mob are big money.
>>
>> we didnt get such a big slice, but ok to keep the dev going a bit. We
>> were very lucky that Janet from the OSI went to bat for us as it sounded
>> like there was a lot of skepticism internally since the OSI does not
>> generally fund software development these days...
>>
>> anyways....more from me soon :)
>>
>> adam
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Open Society Institute
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Institute
>>>
>>> cheers
>>> L.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 09:46, adam hyde<adam at flossmanuals.net>  wrote:
>>>> i dunno all of this. will update when i know more. we havent signed
>>>> anything so keep it quiet for now :)
>>>>
>>>> adam
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 14:13 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>>>>> Can you give us any more details?
>>>>>
>>>>> What part of Soros/OSI are we dealing with?
>>>>>
>>>>> Is this a regular grant program?
>>>>>
>>>>> What else are they doing with FLOSS?
>>>>>
>>>>> Can we announce this publicly?
>>>>>
>>>>> I would like to write this up for OLPC News.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 09:20, adam hyde<adam at flossmanuals.net>  wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 09:09 -0700, dwp wrote:
>>>>>>> Hello: Before i sent this reply i googled OSI and found 13,900,000
>>>>>>> references. Please for us newbies identify these abbreviations that
>>>>>>> frequentlly appear in the discussions. Just picking from the top hits
>>>>>>> OSI could be
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Open Source Institute and Soros Foundation etc. (they do have the
>>>>>>> money!:)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> yep!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In any case, i will take it from the E-mails that this is good news
>>>>>>> for support for Floss projects.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> yep!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> adam
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Regards: david
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>>>>> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
>>>>>>> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Adam Hyde
>>>>>> Founder FLOSS Manuals
>>>>>> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
>>>>>> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
>>>>>> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Free manuals for free software"
>>>>>> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>>>> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
>>>>>> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Adam Hyde
>>>> Founder FLOSS Manuals
>>>> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
>>>> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
>>>> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>>>>
>>>> "Free manuals for free software"
>>>> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Discuss mailing list
>>>> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
>>>> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Adam Hyde
>> Founder FLOSS Manuals
>> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
>> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
>> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>>
>> "Free manuals for free software"
>> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
>> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
>>
>
>
>

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