[CLUE-Talk] IT Samaritans: Linux Adjunct?

[Randy Arabie]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Jed S. Baer wrote:

> Howdy-Hi Friends and Neighbors!
> 
> I attended the IT Samaritans meeting last night. It's very M$ oriented,
> but they have some pretty good reasons, at least given what I know about
> the state of Linux warez, and free/open alternatives. I'd like to prove
> them wrong. Maybe some CLUEbies can help.

I've been curious about the IT Samaritans myself, but never got off my 
rump to attend a meeting.  I had a strong hunch they were M$ oriented.  If 
you are saying you would like to present GNU/Linux, and OpenSource in general,
as a viable option to the non-profit community, then I'm with you.  I believe
they have a place there.

> Here's the deal. They are orienting towards short projects, and also short
> individual involvement in projects, which means that any given piece has
> to be done in a way where startup time is minimal, and transitions from
> one person to the next are easy. To that end, they find it advantageous to
> deal with wizards and templates. Their chosen template environment for web
> pages, for example, is Micro$quash Publisher. One of the reasons why this
> is important is simply that there are far more M$ type techies around than
> Linux/Perl/PHP/etc. types.
> 
> So, there are two prongs here. One, get more un[der]employed linux types
> involved in the group. Two, identify or build analogous "starting points",
> and come up with a way to address the issues of project continuity and
> supportability. I think this is an educational issue, and IT Samaritans is
> by decision not a "tech education" group.
> 
> Along the lines of the K-12 project, I think that getting Linux into the
> non-profit arena could be beneficial in various ways, and, as IT
> Samaritans is trying to do, advocacy, from and "enlightened self-interest"
> direction, can have side benefits of making contacts for employment. I'd
> like to think that the non-profits would also like to lower their TCO.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> later,
> jed
 
I don't know what their 'typical' projects are, but based on the bits you've 
presented, and what I have gathered from their meeting announcements, they 
might include setting up an office LAN or a simple website.  I do recall one 
discussion where "databases" were declared too complex.

As far as a simple website goes, isn't CSS a 'template' type system? 

And when IT Samaritans talk about setting up a website for a non-profit, are 
they talking about a hosted site, or something running on equipment owned and
managed by the non-profit?

The largest obstacle I see is support.  Suppose you set up a LAN w/ SAMBA, 
Sendmail or Qmail, and maybe a FW/NAT/Router for internet sharing.  Even though
you are almost gauranteed to have better uptimes and fewer reboots than a 
M$ solution, who's gonna do all the niffty things a sysadm does like add 
users, read logfiles, application upgrades, and apply security patches?

This doesn't apply strictly to GNU/Linux.  How does (would) IT Samaritans 
answer that question presently?  Do they provide after installation support 
for all their past 'clients'...like applying the M$ service pack released 
weekly ;)

-- 
Cheerio!
        
Randy