One of the major questions that nonprofits have about implementing FOSS in their organizations is “How will I get support?” We outline here a variety of ways to get support for FOSS, as well as the increasing awareness and expertise about FOSS in the nonprofit sector. We also describe several case studies of nonprofit technology providers specializing in some FOSS projects and building relationships with developers, which lead to enhanced capabilities for support.
Technical support for any computing product can come from one of four places:
internal staff and volunteers
technology consultant(s)
software developer or vendor
the larger community (whether it be the community of nonprofit technology workers, the community of users and developers of a particular product, or the larger user community on the internet)
Support for any software product is either provided to an end-user, or to the person who administers that software in an organization (these may be the same people).
Support for FOSS comes from those same four sources, but the emphasis is different. As a general rule, FOSS is not created by or supported by a company that you can call on the phone or e-mail for support. (There are exceptions, like some Linux distributions, and some other software packages for which you can purchase support). However, the community of support for open source software is sometimes much richer than the communities of support for proprietary software.
There are some ways that FOSS may lag behind proprietary software in terms of support – FOSS documentation tends to not be as user-friendly (although this is rapidly changing, and there are increasing numbers of independent documentation efforts). There are fewer available printed books on many FOSS packages (however, there are many books on the most popular applications). In addition, as we’ll describe below, it can be harder to find local, or sector-specific FOSS expertise from consultants.
The good new is that the amount of support available for FOSS is increasing, due to the following five factors:
Open source applications have developed sophisticated user communities, and have even created free web services and applications (like SourceForge and phpBB) that enable a volunteer-based community to collaborate on answering questions, creating tutorials, and reporting bugs and requests for new features.
The nonprofit community itself, including foundations, independent consultants, and NTAPs (nonprofit technology assistance providers) is recognizing the inherent advantages of open source software tailored to the specific needs of the nonprofit groups they support. In addition, NTAPs are increasingly adopting and supporting FOSS.
The producers of mature open source applications (RedHat, Ubuntu, and MySQL are three examples) often sell their software bundled with support. Since the software itself can be obtained for free, this “value added” is essential to create the sales needed for a viable business model. Other FOSS producers do not offer support themselves, but refer users to a growing number of small support providers. The cost is often competitive with the price that larger firms charge for support of popular proprietary applications. And it is optional: if you can do without phone support, you do not have to pay for it.
Where software developers once dominated the open source community, people with additional skills (technical writers, designers, usability experts, etc.) are now actively participating.
Several established corporations, such as IBM and Google, have recognized a self-interest in supporting the development of open source options, and are now investing tens of millions of dollars (or more) each year to address the shortcomings that hinder widespread FOSS adoption. Dell is now selling desktops and laptops with Ubuntu Linux.
Governments, such as the governments of Brazil and Belgium, and cities like Munich are moving to standardize on FOSS. And the state department of education of Kerala in India, along with that state's e-governance system, are now using FOSS. As such adoptions spread, the availability of support for FOSS will continue to increase.
We will focus on the first two of these, which are most relevant to nonprofit organizations.
Both developers and end users have created rich online communities where peer-to-peer support for FOSS can be found. There are many mailing lists, websites and even chat rooms devoted to users of open source software products. Users of the Linux operating system can find support by seeking out the nearest Linux User Group (LUG). We list some of the possible sources of Linux community support below. If you do seek help from other FOSS users or advocates, you will likely notice a culture that is cooperative and giving, consistent with the charitable nature of most nonprofit organizations. In many cases, the developers themselves monitor these lists, and will participate in answering questions.
Each Linux distribution has one or many mailing lists that you can use for support. Those tend to be high traffic, and you can generally find people there who are very familiar with a particular distribution on those lists. Increasingly, you can find community support on more general nonprofit technology lists, as FOSS is used more often in the community.
In general, it is surprising how many people have had the same question you might have, and have gotten it answered in some online forum or list. Typing the key portion of your question in Google will often lead to successful resolution of many issues.
The final trend we will address, and the most important in our opinion, is the recognition within the nonprofit and foundation community that FOSS deserves more attention.
Five or six years ago, during the big push to get nonprofits using technology appropriately, there were only a handful of nonprofit consultants who advertised expertise in open source solutions. Today there are literally hundreds of consultants available, and you can find them through the consultant databases available through TechFinder, Idealist, and CTCnet. There are also many nonprofit technology assistance providers who provide support for FOSS. Finally, there are a number of FOSS developers and projects specifically targeting nonprofit organizations' needs (among them are Benetech, CiviCRM and Organizers' Database).
An increasing number of NTAPs and consultants are beginning to specialize in providing support for FOSS, particularly FOSS Content Management Systems and Constituent Relationship Management systems. Some of these are building relationships with the developer communities, which both strengthen the developer communities, as well as enhance the ability of the providers to give high-level support to their clients using these tools.
for those readers who are consultants, ask the following questions when deciding to adopt a FOSS project to use with clients:
Can this FOSS project take care of some needs your clients have at the moment?
Does this FOSS project have the potential to fill needs in the future?
Do you have enough expertise in the language of the project (PHP, Python, Java, etc.) and the underlying technologies (web applications, desktop development, etc.) to be able to take full advantage of the project?
Have you participated in the user community? Is the culture compatible with your culture?
What might you be able to share with the community? Code? Documentation? Community-building?
There has been error in communication with Booktype server. Not sure right now where is the problem.
You should refresh this page.