Sep 24, 2004

9 slides

Enrico Zini (enrico@debian.org)

Custom Debian Distributions and Non Profit Organizations

What I'll be talking about

Why Debian Non Profit

What means supporting non profits

The role of diversity

Pushing customization further

Conclusion

Why Debian Non Profit

We want to make the world a better place. But we are just peaceful computer people: we need to be smart:

To influence governments you need skilled politicians

To influence big and evil corporations you need lots of people

To get people to love each other you need lots of fantasy

Non Profits are already doing all this, we just need to help them.

The Target: Non Profits

What is working with non profits like:

They have very diverse needs, difficult to satisfy

They have almost no money

They don't want to loose too much time with technology

They may be ideally motivated to use Free Software

They are very nice people

Common requirements:

Membership management, with tracking of donations

Printing addresses and labels

Communicating, offline and online

Some unique mission-specific application

(all around, not an easy task)

Fair trade and charity shops need inventory management and country-specific accounting software

Health related organizations need clinical files management

Media activists need multimedia publishing and sharing frameworks

Human Right organizations need very strong crypto and security

...

Diversity of Non Profits

Custom Debians for Non Profits

Few common needs: we need to customize

Few resources: we need to share efforts

Custom Debian Distributions are The Perfect Thing:

Debian Non-Profit Internet Server (to host internet services on behalf of various NGOs)

Debian Non-Profit Intranet Server

Debian Non-Profit Workstation for Fast Computers

Debian Non-Profit Workstation for Slow Computers

Why only customize Debian?

Debian NP Shop
(Debian Non-Profit Workstation with inventory management)

Debian EquoTrade
(Debian NP Shop with EquoTrade shops specific software, and with applications configured to reach the EquoTrade central server)

Debian EquoTrade Italia
(Debian EquoTrade with accounting software specific for Italian laws, browser bookmarks database with links to the various italian civil society websites and a fortune database with quotations from Gino Strada and Zanotelli)

Debian EquoTrade Firenze
(with fleur-de-lis flowered artwork and some local jargon)

(note: EquoTrade is a fictious example)

But if everyone does their own one...

...Debian-NP keeps them together!

Many subdistros but few (one?) developer community

Central point for competence and experience exchange

Sharing of best practices

Sharing and reusing of ideas

Sharing of documentation, cliparts, pictures, stories and other free content

Noone should work alone!

Conclusions

Non profits are diverse

Non profits need diversity

Diversity is the key

Custom Debian Distributions are the way to get it!

...and, of course:

If this isn't a way to Total World Domination, what is?

45 mins including questions: ~35 mins of talk

Goal: show that there are problems we don't usually think about, nor we are

aware of

Introduction: what the talk is about

Showing non-technical problems that can happen inside Debian and we ren't always aware of

2003-07-19T11:28:55