Greetings, We're sending this message to alert developers of a potential Debian subproject aimed toward desktop use in non-profit organizations, particularly small ones. We're also hoping to poll the interest for such a distribution -- especially from potential developers who might want to collaborate with us on the project. Over the last few years, we've dealt extensively with small non-profit organizations engaged in grassroots organizing, technological assistance, independent media, and educational work in a variety of areas. We see non-profits as a particularly important area to launch a subproject because many of these non-profits are already familiar with free and open source software, philosophies and development methodologies. If they are large and technically involved enough to need their own server, they probably already use GNU/Linux. However in day-to-day operations most use proprietary operating systems. Unlike many groups of users where advocacy is an uphill battle, many non-profits *want* to use GNU/Linux on their workstations but are waiting for someone to "make it easy for them." We want to do just this. By putting together a sub-distribution that fulfills the needs of non-profits and pitching it as a solution *for them*, we hope to get many small organizations interested in the project. Most of these groups use their workstations for a limited and predictable set of tasks that include many areas of overlap with other sub-projects (word processing, book-keeping, email, maintaining contacts) plus other more specialized uses (fund raising, developing membership lists). With this project, we aim to create an easily installable customized Debian distribution with the needs of small non-profits in mind. In the future, we'd also like to develop several new applications geared to replace programs many non-profits use that are only available on proprietary operating systems. If you are interested in this project, please don't hesitate to read our web page[1] join our preliminary mailing list[2] and contribute on our wiki pages[3]. If you have experience with development (development in Debian in particular) and are interested in assisting, PLEASE email us our or our mailing list. Micah and I know that we cannot succeed this project alone won't start "official" work until we have enough people involved to know that we can do this correctly and successfully. If all goes well, you'll hear more from us soon. Regards, Benjamin Mako Hill <mako@debian.org> Micah Anderson <micah@riseup.net> (NM) [1] http://nonprofit.debian.net [2] http://lists.yukidoke.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-np [3] http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?DebianNonProfit -- Benj. Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
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