ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

[Pierre van Male <vmalep@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All,

My name is Pierre. I am 38 yo and I have been working for the last 10 years
as an expatriate for humanitarian organizations in very different contexts
(Palestine, Darfur, Chechnya, Sri-Lanka, Guinea, etc.). I am also a big fan
of OSS and Ubuntu in particular. Therefore, to be stuck to MS Windows at
work has always been a frustration form me.

I discovered the Ubuntu NGO group a few weeks ago and I completely share
the goal: to promote the use of Ubuntu and OSS among non-profit
organizations. In my understanding, this is not only a pragmatic question
(OSS being more efficient), but also a question of principle (to own the IT
solution we are using and depending upon). For the same reason, I believe
we should strongly encourage OSS in developing countries. Not only they
sometimes don't have the economical power to pay the proprietary softwares
they are using, but even more: it is such an opportunity for them to gain
independence from the Western world (well, I mean the big finance one,
maybe not so Western anymore)! And it is not a surprise that several of the
case studies reported on the Ubuntu NGO wiki (all very nice by the way) are
actually IT projects dedicated to this second objective.

When he funded Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth had the project to transform
GNU/Linux into a professional end-user solution. Professional in the sense
that the Ubuntu distribution should have nothing to envy to its proprietary
alternatives. And I believe Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical and the Ubuntu
community have already achieved this objective (I personally love Unity,
even though it still has to improve a lot).

Still, the promotion of Ubuntu on the market is a big challenge because of
the aggressive marketing driven by Microsoft and Apple. I wonder why then
Canonical does not promote its distribution in a more proactive way among
non-profit organizations and the developing countries?

It is of course nice to see volunteer geeks spending times to support NGOs
using OSS, but why does not Canonical put in place a structure that would
provide to those initiatives its full back-up? If Ubuntu manage to be
adopted by a few but famous NGOs, it would be such a good prove of concept
for the commercial market! In counter part, those NGOs could then
contribute to the promotion of OSS in the countries where they are deployed.

NGOs working in the humanitarian sector at the field level have very
similar structures and needs.

What I am witnessing is this:

   - Individual email system: mails sent to 5 users in the same office
   would be downloaded 5 times; when a user is out (on the field or on leave),
   nobody has access to his emails.
   - Internet connection through V-Sat, often irregular (because of the
   power supply and the possible failure of the system).
   - Use of individual files (Word, Excel, PDF, images) shared through mail
   and over the LAN in the best case and archive individually on the PCs (with
   risk the be lost or accessed by the wrong person; I have never seen an
   encrypted drive in use).
   - Vulnerability to virus (experienced on every mission...).

What could Ubuntu/OSS offer (lets dream a little bit):

   - A groupware email system (with level of access depending of the
   position of the user in the NGO structure, hence with a LDAP) in order for
   the urgent messages not to get stuck when the addressee is gone on field
   trip for a few days and to overcome the issue of the regular turn over of
   expatriates.
   - A CMS that allows to share various documents (field trip reports,
   minutes of meeting, field assessment, HR memo, scanned documents, etc.)
   between offices with the control of the access rights, the
   replication/archiving according to the needs and the search feature (index
   file shared on every Ubuntu PCs).
   - Encryption of the drives in case the hardware get stolen or lost and
   VPN active on every Ubuntu PC so it can be connected from any Internet
   source and synchronize with the rest of the NGO network safely.

All this is not that simple to design and configure (especially the CMS),
but it is technically feasible. We can create an image with the system
ready for deployment. I imagine an Ubuntu system that could either be used
as a local server in an office (running on a PC dedicated to that, while
the other desktops in the same LAN would access it through a web interface)
or be used as desktop/server on every PCs (the power of the today laptops
and the flexibility of GNU/Linux allow that). In case of several Ubuntu
systems running in the same LAN, one of them would automatically take over
the server tasks and the other desktops would work as clients (to limit the
bandwidth usage).

The issue of maintaining an Ubuntu installation without a direct access has
been reported as a common issue. It is also my experience, in particular
when I was in Guinea with a bad Internet connection. And it is very
frustrating because we know that technically, a good solution is possible.
In that perspective, Keryx was the best option I tested, but there were
room for improvement and it should be adopted as a standard and integrated
alternative for Ubuntu installations without direct connection to internet
or with limited bandwidth. I believe that any Ubuntu system should be
designed to act as a soft source server over the LAN where it is located.
It is not normal that in a same LAN with several Ubuntu PCs, each Ubuntu
installations connect individually to the internet to be updated. They
should first connect to each other to get the updated list of packages and
the packages already downloaded.

“Tout un programme”, I know. It may be difficult to convince Mark
Shuttleworth to invest in such a project..., but it does not cost a lot
(only time) to design it. Let me know what you think about it and I will do
my best to progress in that direction.

Best regards,
Pierre