What is Open Source? Open source software (OSS) generally refers to software whose source code can be read, modified, and shared, such that it can ultimately evolve into a more stable product that can be customized to meet specialized needs, at a quicker pace than conventional software development, and does not operate under licensing terms that are restrictive to any persons or groups, fields of endeavor, or other software. What are ASPs? As one means to make technology accessible for more nonprofits, Application Service Providers (ASPs) have entered the sector. ASPs are third-party players (for-profit, nonprofit, and even government) that host and manage (and in some instances create) software and software-oriented services on a set of centralized servers for organizations and individuals who access those services via a wide-area network (WAN). A WAN, in essence, is a network of two or more local-area networks (LANs) that covers a large geographical range; the Internet, in fact, is a WAN. The idea behind an ASP is that by outsourcing potentially costly software needs to a third-party host/provider, organizations save money on acquisition and maintenance costs. There are at least five kinds of ASPs (thanks to Webopedia)

• Enterprise (works on high-end business solutions)
• Local/Regional (wide range of general services for small organizations in a defined geographic area)
• Specialist (specific applications for specific purposes, include Web hosting)
• Vertical Market (services targeted to specific markets or industries)
• Volume Business (packaged services for small to mid-size organizations)

For more information on the ASP industry, check out the ASP News Review and the ASP Industry Consortium. Why should my nonprofit care about OSS or ASPs? Consider, for a moment, how technology might have been pitched to your organization previously. It is often phrased as something you "buy", something you "have to have to be relevant in an increasingly digital society." Technology is seen way too often as something that is dictated to end-users rather than shaped by user needs and expectations. If that were not all, technology is often held as something that groups with the most resources "deserve" to get access to first, with the expectations that it will ultimately "trickle down" to the large numbers of organizations who lag behind. The issue with the "trickle down" approach is that the lag time can stretch on indefinitely. Organizations "behind the curve" unless bumped up to a level where they can directly absorb and benefit from innovation while they are fresh, will always be in a position of playing catch-up. One other thing to keep in mind: new types of donors, especially from the technology arena, are entering the philanthropic realm, and they are interested not only in supporting nonprofit work, they want to encourage more nonprofits to take advantage of technology for fulfilling organizational missions. Simply put, the OSS and ASP movements both hold potential for fulfilling the promise of narrowing the technology gaps within the nonprofit sector, by delivering high-quality, high-end tools for everything from information databases to analytical tools heretofore unavailable because of cost, sophistication, and inflexibility of tools to meet the scale, size, and needs of nonprofits. Additionally, they offer nonprofits a significant opportunity to influence the development of tools that can meet internal needs and those of the stakeholders, constituencies, and beneficiaries of nonprofit efforts. Sounds promising, but there has to be a downside, right? Well, despite the successes open source efforts have yielded- including the Apache web server software that powers a significant number of websites around the world, the Linux operating system, and the Sendmail program- open source enjoys relative obscurity by the broader nonprofit sector. The rub is that understanding the realm of free software or open source tools, without technical support staff or volunteers, entails paying someone to set up and maintain the tools for you. In this instance, it is easier to just by commercial, off-the-shelf software. Nonprofits are wary of anything "free" out of worry that the quality, despite the input of technology experts and enthusiasts, is substandard. Even if the quality of the tool is great, there is no rating or evaluation service for nonprofit technology tools or services that can address issues like usability, quality of user interface, how much training or what type of learning curve is involved. OSS, moreover, requires the active engagement and participation in the design, development, testing, refinement, and customization in the tools themselves. Nonprofits who are busy carrying out their mission are not in a position to adopt a mode of technology and dictate a method of interaction with which their partners, end users, or intermediaries are either unwilling or unable to comply. And why, a number of nonprofits would ask, should we use an untested free product when we can just get a free donation of commercial products? As long as companies can receive charity/tax deductions for donations of their products, and professional developers cannot for their services on open-source work, it is a good question with no easy answer. This raises a question that cannot be easily dismissed: must Must OSS first be adopted by the commercial mainstream before it can be embraced by the nonprofit sector, or does OSS give the sector an opportunity to take advantage of innovation at the source? There is a downside, as well to ASPs. The ASP requires an organization to give up some control with respect to the location of its data. Organizations are also at the mercy of the ASPs technology and financial health, and unless the service is specifically geared to a particular type of organization, groups may find their needs continuing to be unmet. To the extent that a nonprofit ASP, versus a for-profit ASP serving nonprofits, can be established, it faces a number of barriers, not the least of which is the fact that it must utilize support from the philanthropic or foundation community, which is often hesitant about supporting general operating expenses on a long-term basis. Well, okay, maybe OSS and ASP are worth my time to follow. How does my organization get connected to what's going on? As a way to begin substantive nonprofit dialogue and activity around the issues raised above, some thirty participants gathered in Ann Arbor, Michigan in May of this year for a special workshop titled "Making Advanced Technology Work for Community Serving Organizations: the Potential Impact of OSS and ASPs". The workshop was sponsored by the Alliance for Community Technology (ACT) a strategic partnership between the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the University of Michigan School of Information. The idea behind the workshop was simple: to develop a strategy for improving the range, and quality, of software tools for organizations with limited resources. Information on the meeting, as well as some great reference and resource listings, is available online. As an added treat, the workshop also yielded a joint statement, titled "Making Advanced Technology Work for Community-Serving Organizations: The Potential Impact of OSS and ASPs," released for distribution. If you would like to receive more updates on this effort, there is also a sign-up form to join an e-mail information list. Cliff Lampe, on of the key figures at the Ann Arbor meeting, wrote a good piece outlining the case for interaction between the open source, ASP, and nonprofit communities, which also sparked a pretty spirited discussion on the Slashdot hacker community Web space. He points out the basic, sometimes obvious, and often overlooked elements that need to be in place for this all to take root in the sector, namely:

• further education, outreach, and listening to sector needs and concerns by the developer community before, during, and after new product and service development
• nonprofit involvement and advocacy around open source efforts
• assessment and examination within the sector as to the type of work and information developed and exchanged
• an organized attempt to either develop code or gear an ASP towards community-based or -serving organizations is a prime opportunity to let new coders learn how to further develop their skills while doing good.

Also, interested NPTalkers should begin to keep an ear out for the developments with the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN). This is a developing association of individuals and organizations who provide technology assistance to non-profits with technology assistance, the funding and philanthropic community interested in the effective use of technology, and non-profits who embrace the self-help or "do-it-yourself" approach to technology. Though it is still finalizing some aspects of its initial activities, they will have an interest and a role in addressing the development, dissemination, and implementation of innovative technology tools and technology maintenance approaches through intra- and cross-sector collaboration, and they will need the help of interested nonprofits, especially at the grassroots level, to help advance this goal. Protocols and Practice Open source tools are based on things called protocols. These are standards or formats, codified into a set of rules, based on consensus among developers. These rules inform the development of technologies, which can then be revised or improved upon, and incorporated into the formal set of rules, depending upon the particular development procedure. Protocols, in practice, do not come about, nor are they exclusive to any one group. Often, competing standards are developed, with ultimately one or more dominant standards determined by the marketplace and/or level of interest and adoption by a range of developers and end-users. A good number of open source efforts operate as nonprofits or under a not-for-profit identity. Some of the groups we have identified include the Free Protocols Foundation, the League for Programming Freedom, the Free Patents group, the Free Software Foundation, and the Open Source Organization, each working to provide support for and development of open and public-domain software tools. Of particular interest to nonprofits are the developments of data exchange protocols. which address the transmission of data between two devices. Protocols in this instance lay out the method for ensuring how the quality of data is maintained during the transmission between hardware and/or software devices, and how sending and receiving units acknowledge receipt and transmission. Why is this important? Because as more nonprofit information moves to the Internet, there is a greater need to ensure that entities within and outside the sector can exchange their information and conduct information transactions that are secure, sound, and address a range of accessibility concerns. The development of these standards through a process that engages the widest range of sector players will make adoption of the standards ultimately developed easier, because their relevance and legitimacy will be felt. There are two standards in development currently around nonprofit data exchange. They are specifically geared around how data is to be formatted about charitable donations, so that information related to charities, for example, entered via the Internet can be entered into and accessed easily by different fundraising software tools. The for-profit Social Ecology, in cooperation with nonprofit and for profit partners, first developed the Lightweight Donation Data Exchange (LDDX) protocol in Spring 2000. It reached version 1.0 in April. The current version is 1.02, released July 24, 2000. The purpose of the protocol is the exchange of donation information. The developers behind the protocol are interested in handing this over to the nonprofit community and interested parties. Although there is not yet a nonprofit organization offering to facilitate standards setting in general, this release of LDDX is intended to hand over the protocol to the community most affected by it. An open discussion of standards setting for the nonprofit community, including discussion of LDDX and other initiatives, can be found at: (http://standards.gilbert.org). It would ultimately like for a nonprofit entity to house the protocol's development. On July 31, 2000, a competing standard was released by the OPX (Open Philanthropy Exchange) Consortium. The OPX Consortium was launched and overseen by three companies that provide ASP or related-technology tools in the fundraising arena to nonprofits: Charitableway.com, Blackbaud, and MyAssociation.com. The OPX Consortium's work and has been endorsed by over 15 for-profit technology firms. OPX is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). XML is a computer language used increasingly in commercial environments to describe properties of data, through "tags" or instructions, so that a broad range of applications can understand it and perform customized and/or complex processes on that data. The concern, on the part of both entities, is to what degree their standards are not only adopted and viewed as legitimate by nonprofits, but also which will engage more nonprofit input. As both progress in their deliberations, it is clear that nonprofits are encouraged to lend their voice to the standard that will, in effect, become de facto for the nonprofit sector. So what's the upshot? Having an actual say, if not ultimate responsibility and ownership of the products your organization uses, is a daunting, unfamiliar, but also potentially powerful opportunity for the nonprofit sector. Because most organizations have mission focused on people, not "end-users," and don't currently see their value as key technology players, it is important to remind the sector of its pivotal role as technology intermediaries for the people they serve. Even if it boils down to one database on one computer in the corner of a small cramped office with one phone line, a nonprofit with technology is a nonprofit that functions as a technology conduit for its stakeholders. The whole notion that the sector can play a key role in determining the standards in a participatory manner-- literally determining how the information it generates gets exchanged, especially among nonprofits and the entities that support them-- is an important one. Resources Cited Webopedia Definition of ASP ASP Industry Consortium Apache Web Server Linux Operating System (Webopedia) Sendmail Program Alliance for Community Technology (ACT) "Making Advanced Technology Work for Community Serving Organizations: The Potential Impact of OSS and ASPs" "Making Advanced Technology Work" (Joint Statement) Slashdot article by Cliff Lampe Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) Free Protocols Foundation League for Programming Freedom Free Patents Free Software Foundation Open Source Organization Social Ecology Lightweight Donation Data Exchange (LDDX) LDDX Discussion Forum OPX (Open Philanthropy Exchange) Consortium Charitableway.com Blackbaud MyAssociation.com 2 Groups Release Protocols for Data on Donations" (8/10/00) Chronicle of Philanthropy, Nicole Wallace (Paid Registration Required