> 1) Should the church sponsor Open Source projects. Most definitely. > However, I don't think the church itself should start an open source > software "forge" itself when SourceForge and places like it already > exist. There is no reason why we can't leverage those existing > resources (unless the host refuses the project). That is what most > other companies who are sponsoring open source projects are doing now > (even IBM and Microsoft). They put their projects up on SourceForge. > Then you are not taking valuable church resources duplicating something > else.
Your mention of IBM and Microsoft sponsoring open source projects reminds me of Google's recent Summer of Code [1]. Wouldn't it be cool to have something similar, with an LDS focus? Perhaps the Church couldn't sponsor it directly due to the sensitivity of tithing funds, but perhaps our organization could come up with something similar, potentially even working with some of the Church's universities, or even their alumni associations. For that matter, money wouldn't necessarily need to be involved. For example, work on open source projects (especially those somehow related to the Church or it's misison) could be integrated into certain Computer Science classes. For example, a Software Engineering class project, rather than writing a throw-away project from scratch, which will never be run after the class is over, could identify a specific set of functionality to add, for example, to some geneology program, and ultimately work with the upstream authors to integrate it. This especially sounds enticing with an official Church project (such as PAF) where the upstream authors are Church employees. Anyway, just some more ideas to throw out. :-O Charles 1. http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html -- For shaving comfort Without A sting That big blue tube Has everything Burma-Shave http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1955/for_shaving_comfort _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list Ldsoss@lists.ldsoss.org http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
