[CLUE-Talk] Re: Nonprofits using Linux?

[CLUE President]

Please be sure to Cc:  Anders directly.

Jeffery Cann
CLUE President

On Wednesday 23 October 2002 07:08 am, you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering whether you could do me a favor.  I am a member of the
> Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI), and we are trying to put together
> a series of case studies of the experience of nonprofits with using Linux
> for their network.  The idea behind the study is that we want to show
> nonprofits that other people just like them have successfully (we hope!) 
> switched to Linux and give them an idea of what's involved pitfalls to
> avoid, etc.   Would you be willing to post our notice about the study,
> attached below, to your LUG's mailing list?  Also, do you have any
> suggestions about other folks I could talk to who might know of some good
> leads?
>
> Thanks,
> Anders Schneiderman
> Nonprofit Open Source Initiative
> http://www.nosi.net
>
> P.S. In case you're wondering, we've already tried posting to Slashdot but
> got rejected (they didn't say why).
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Seeking Participants for Linux in Nonprofits Study
>
> The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) is developing case studies of
> nonprofit organizations that use Linux for their office network. We are
> looking for organizations with staffs of 15 people or more. If you work or
> volunteer for a nonprofit of that size, that uses Linux for networking
> (including file/print sharing, or as an email server), we are interested in
> interviewing you about your experience.
>
> The idea behind the study is to convince more nonprofits to take a serious
> look at Linux. While many schools and government agencies are beginning to
> consider Linux as an option, awareness in the rest of the nonprofit sector,
> especially small-to-medium size organizations, remains very low. Given that
> these groups have very tight budgets and share the volunteer ethic of Open
> Source, you would think that Linux would be widespread among them. But so
> far nonprofits have been surprisingly reluctant to embrace Open Source.
> When it comes to technology, nonprofits tend to trail several years behind
> the for-profit world. Although many nonprofits use Apache, PHP, etc. for
> Web work, most treat the idea of Open Source in general and Linux in
> particular the same way businesses did several years ago. The fact that
> Open Source is now mainstream in the business world hasn't had much impact
> on the way nonprofits see it.
>
> By doing this study, we hope to show nonprofits that other organizations
> just like theirs have used Linux to cut their total IT costs (including
> training and support) and to create networks they can really count on. We
> also hope to give them a better understanding of what it means to run Linux
> vs. Microsoft/Novell networks as well as the issues they need to think
> about and the pitfalls that they will want to avoid if they moved to Open
> Source on the back end.
>
> If you think your organization would make a good case study, please fill
> out the survey that's available on the study's web page at
> http://www.nosi.net/tco.shtml. For more information on NOSI, please check
> out our web site at www.nosi.net.
>
> Thanks,
> Reuben Silvers
> Anders Schneiderman
> The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative
> www.nosi.net