Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus 1-2-3, and chair of the Mitch Kapor Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, Open Source Applications Foundation, and the Level Playing Field Institute is using philanthropy to create open source software.
Ever more reason to ponder the potential applicability of open source principles, practices, and economics to creating philanthropic resources and products.
1 comment:
Open Source principles are strangely elusive in the philanthropic world. And they shouldn't be.
Seems like two community-based, neighborhood nonprofits that compete with one another for funding will collaborate a whole lot more readily than two foundations. The folks on the ground might be better able to put aside personalities since they can directly see the benefits of cooperation and collaboration on the faces of those they serve.
The second dynamic is that philanthropic leaders are not particularly creative, dynamic, or able to adapt to the accelerating change that surrounds them in technology, ideas and society's emerging concept of social responsibility.
BUT, the tide slowly turns.
The Mellon foundation is probably the single biggest funder of open source software today, not, I think, because they understand technology (though they do), but because they understand higher education. And they had the vision to apply open source principles to their knowledge of higher education to support the creation of software that helps every institution of higher education rather than just a single one.
http://www.mellon.org/programs/highered/informationtech/informationtech.htm
http://juicy.mellon.org/RIT/MellonOSProjects/
http://www.osafoundation.org/MellonAnnouncement_Sep-26-2003.htm
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