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BaseBox exists
Tactical Tech and Women'sNet are pleased to announce the web launch of the latest edition of NGO-in-a-box, the BaseBox.
base.ngoinabox.org
The BaseBox is a collection of tools for the day to day running of small to medium sized NGOs. Produced by Tactical Tech in collaboration with Women'sNet, the BaseBox aims to make it easier to set up base, find the right software and learn how to use it.
Targeted primarily at activist and advocacy organisations in developing countries the Box contains a set of peer-reviewed Free and Open Source Software tools, with associated guides and tutorials. The edition can be accessed online but it's primary form is as a physical box set of CDs, providing immediate access to all the software tools without the need to download them. The physical box will become available in the coming weeks.
Plumi is coming
So the first release of Plumi, the Plone based video sharing CMS produced by EngageMedia, is just around the corner. The beta should all be out in the next few weeks and available for installation and testing.
from the site
Plumi is a GPL licensed video sharing Content Management System based on Plone and produced by the EngageMedia collective. Plumi enables you to create your own sophisticated video sharing site; by adding it to an existing Plone instance you can quickly have a wide array of functionality to facilitate video distribution and community creation.
Free Media vs Free Beer
The free beer Richard Stallman loathes is everywhere. Media companies are currently falling over themselves to produce the new hive for user generated content. The names have rapidly become common place - YouTube, MySpace, Flickr - and their affect has been enormous, dramatically changing the production and distribution of media globally. Free beer pours from the taps of these new hubs of participatory media as they clamor to get you in the door. But free beer, as Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman has always emphasised, is not the same as freedom.
The Free Software Foundation has a stock standard one liner about what free software is and is not: "free as in free speech, not as in free beer". That is free software is not about price, but liberty. Free software is software that may be freely shared and modified on the basis that those modifications be made available to others. The defining document for free software is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
Open Publishing in a Box
So the Open Publishing edition of NGO-in-a-box is finally launched after a long 6 months. You can read more about the box on the iCommons blog, and also in their pdf lab report newsletter.
