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24GitHub TCF OSSInSocialSector FINAL Updated

Mutual benefit organizations leverage open source software (OSS) to enhance collaboration and resource sharing in the social sector, ultimately creating high-value products. Experts emphasize that OSS aligns with social sector values of openness and inclusion, reducing costs and fostering collective efforts among organizations. The practice of using OSS is viewed as essential for promoting equity and social justice within technology development.

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Nizam Haq
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7 views1 page

24GitHub TCF OSSInSocialSector FINAL Updated

Mutual benefit organizations leverage open source software (OSS) to enhance collaboration and resource sharing in the social sector, ultimately creating high-value products. Experts emphasize that OSS aligns with social sector values of openness and inclusion, reducing costs and fostering collective efforts among organizations. The practice of using OSS is viewed as essential for promoting equity and social justice within technology development.

Uploaded by

Nizam Haq
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MUTUAL BENEFIT

organizations work, bridge technology gaps that limit impact,


strengthen overall OSS product offerings, and, ultimately, build
products of a high societal value add that may not have otherwise
been created.

Open source creates resource sharing opportunities in the


social sector, especially for technology talent. As Jake Watson,
a Senior Director at the UN Foundation’s Digital Impact Alliance
(DIAL) explained on the production side, “The argument that I
always make about open source for good is it’s a mechanism for
collaboration. In a space where we're all ostensibly trying to save
the world…we can consolidate the market - you're at UNICEF,
and I'm at IRC, and we can both be contributing code in the same
project because we have the same goals.” Abel Miller of the Gates
Foundation stressed this form of collaboration can bring down
the cost to the consumer to, “essentially zero, so that cost is no
longer a barrier for use.”

Suzi Grishpul, a Web Product Manager at 350.org went further,


saying that being a consumer of open source software aligns
more with the social sector world values over proprietary
software, as open source is rooted in social sector ideals of
openness, collaboration, and inclusion. This sentiment was echoed
in a 2018 report by the Technology for Social Justice Project,
which states that “Free/Libre and Open Source Software is seen
by many practitioners as crucial to growing and sustaining the
ecosystem, because its values are consistent with their goals
of equity and social justice, and because in practice it enables
resource sharing around technology development, rather than
competition.”17 Indeed, in the survey conducted for this paper, both
developers and non-developers pointed to Value Collaboration as
a top reason to use OSS in the social sector, below.

17 https://morethancode.cc/T4SJ_fullreport_082018_AY_web.pdf

OPEN SOURCE SOFT WARE IN THE SOCIAL SECTOR 24

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