[okfn-discuss] Free Software tools for OKFN -- please contribute

Fri Nov 29 18:28:55 UTC 2013

On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 10:19:38 -0800 (PST), Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com> said:

    > Does the software to be listed need to be free to use AND open
    > source AND anything else? Or is it enough to be free to use.

Free Software has a well accepted definition:

    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

(you may note the intellectual heritage of the Open Definition here)

Making lists is useful, but for the OKF I think it would be helpful to
have statements of the form:

    We currently use non-free tool X. Please help us replace it with
    Free Software.

The case that brought up this discussion was surveys. I don't know how
commonly surveys are done by the OKF and how important it is to spend
effort on that as opposed to something else.

If the sysadmin team is going to help with this -- which I think we
should -- we need to find out what to address in what
order. Prioritise a bit in terms of importance, visibility and ease of
solving the problem. This should be driven by demand from the
community and we need it to be a little bit focused and specific.

-w