ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

	Conference Homepage
	Abstracts

Solving Problems or Selling Snakeoil?: Evaluating the Technical and Ideological Merits of Open Source Software in the Nonprofit Sector
by
Paul-Brian McInerney
Columbia University

Open source software (OSS) has long been touted in the for-profit world for its technical merits: greater security, greater stability, and enhanced flexibility over proprietary software. OSS is software in which the “source code,” i.e., the formula for the program, is freely available for anyone to modify and pass along. Proprietary software is software in which the source code is unavailable to users and can therefore not be changed. The analogy that is frequently drawn is that of a restaurant versus a cookbook. Proprietary software is like eating at a restaurant: you can enjoy the food and you pay for your dinner, but you cannot take home and modify the recipe. OSS is more like a cookbook: you may pay for the recipes (though much of the software is free), but you are welcome to adjust them according to your tastes and needs, and can even repackage them and pass them along.

While the ostensible technical merits have given the open source community considerable inroads to the for-profit sector, open source advocates have been stressing the ideological merits of OSS to the nonprofit sector. Such claims boast the collaborative and communitarian nature of open source projects, the low cost of OSS, and the support of millions of users. What do such ideological claims tell us about the nature of the nonprofit sector? How are open source advocates changing the ways nonprofits think about technology?

This paper examines the claims open source advocates in the nonprofit sector have been making to convert nonprofits from proprietary software packages to OSS. Open source advocates are a subset of individuals and organizations providing technology training and consulting services to the nonprofit sector known as nonprofit technology assistance providers (NTAPs). As the NTAP field has grown in the US and abroad, it has faced challenges in helping nonprofits bridge the “organizational divide” that forms a technological separation between the third sector and their government and private sector counterparts. Is OSS the answer? Or is it technological snake oil? Can free software help nonprofits become more effective and efficient?

The study draws from the author’s extensive field research and qualitative interviews with NTAPs and technology advocates in the nonprofit sector. The answers to these questions will help us understand the role of technology and ideology in the nonprofit sector.

Date received: October 10, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # camp-27.