[lug] Nonprofits using Linux? (fwd)

[J. Wayde Allen]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 09:08:46 -0400
From: Anders Schneiderman <SCHNEIDA at seiu.org>
To: wallen at lug.boulder.co.us
Cc: reubensilvers at yahoo.com
Subject: Nonprofits using Linux?

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