As we understand the problem, gaining acceptance for Open Source
software in government, and by extension, schools and homes, is
largely a question of education. There is a large, and
largely untapped, community of people long focused on the freedom
of information and public education, the users and Librarians
at our Public Libraries.
Anyone who has read the news or listened to NPR lately has heard of
at least one case where the librarian's associations have come out in
defense of the freedom of information. Our idea is to tap that
fount of knowledge as our starting point. We all have our pet points
of focus, from schools and farms to the universities; the libraries
can be the beachhead we need to reach all of these areas.
Our overall concept is to foster an adopt-a-library
program. To this end, we discussed a "branding" scheme, whereby we
could offer some certainty that if a librarian is presented with a CD
from our organization, it would be simple for them to ascertain that
it did indeed contain the software that it purported to contain, the
software was actually GPL, and was supported (technically, not
judgmentally) by our group. We think the ability to verify the
safety and validity of the CDs is core to gaining entry into this niche.
SourceForge Project Site: http://www.sf.net/projects/fossile-project
Our thanks to the Baton Rouge Linux User Group for their
founding efforts
Baton Rouge Linux User
Group
Our thanks to Source Forge for providing support.
