The importance of FOSS
for non-profit organizations
If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together
to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the endless
immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Introduction
• 80’s - 90’s
- donated or “borrowed”
- 5-year-old versions
• now
- unit or per-seat license
- software as a service
• more and more nonprofits running FOSS
- on their servers (apache, mysql)
- desktop applications (Firefox, openoffice.org)
- linux (Debian-NP, Ubuntu)

Why?
• Free: free as in beer
• Open source: free as in freedom
• License: free for anyone to use

Free?
”When you buy proprietary software, you look for a
good vendor. With open source, get a good developer
you can depend on ... Find someone who will tell you
honestly what's up and who communicates well – free
software isn't entirely free – you need someone to
tweak things.”
Eric Squair, Web Manager, Greenpeace Canada

Total Cost of Ownership
How much does this technology cost to implement and
maintain?
- software acquisition cost
- implementation costs
- hardware costs
- training costs
- maintenance fees
- upgrade fees
- administration & support

Strategic value
Factors beyond the costs related to the technology
itself, for example the impact on staff productivity, or on
the quality of services delivered to clients.
- customizing the software
- vendor goes out of sale, still community support
- philosophical

License
• GNU General Public License
• No unit or per-seat licenses
• Make as many copies as you want, for no extra charge
• Source code is available
• Source code can be modified and re-distributed
• No discrimination: anyone can use it

License
JIRA is free under the Community License:
- non-profit
- non-government
- non-academic
- non-commercial
- non-political
- secular

Open source
Anyone can contribute.

Open source
• report bugs
• request features
• aid users on fora and other support channels
• write documentation
• help localize
• contribute code

Users are developers
• contribute bugs you fixed,
• features you added,
• modules you wrote,
• to the core project

Why do users
contribute?
• their company needs things fixed
• give back to the community
• eternal fame!
• Google Summer of Code
• Google Highly Open Participation Contest

Many thanks to
• CivicActions
• Nonprofit Open Source Initiative
• FOSS4US
• Rossana Tarsiero: Scrapbook of My Life
• Drupal Community