[Computerbank] The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI)

[Romana Challans]

http://www.nosi.net/
Welcome to NOSI!

The open source community model for software development and support
represents a huge potential opportunity for nonprofit organizations. The
promise of open source is to allow the nonprofit sector to:

    * Share technical expertise across organizations
    * Leverage limited software development resources
    * Avoid lock-in to proprietary technology platforms, and
	* Minimize licensing costs as well as total cost of
	* ownership. 

However, non-profits have been slow to explore the
opportunities afforded by open source. Many are not even
aware of the open source approach as an option. This is
due to a combination of factors:

    * The technical nature of the benefits involved
	* makes them difficult to communicate and understand
    * The open source community tends to be a closed
	* loop, designed to serve the needs of its
	* members, who are mostly very technically
	* savvy. Open source development efforts tend to
	* neglect software ease of use, tutorials and
	* documentation, and support for less technical
	* users.
    * Most open source applications do not
	* incorporate features and functionality
	* that address non-profit's unique
	* operational needs 

The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) was begun in June 2001 to 
bridge this gap between the nonprofit and open source communities.
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Romana Challans
ITShare SA Inc / ComputerbankSA
http://cai-sa.linunix.com/
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