AdamNicholson's NTENny DisplayI'm composing this weekly round-up differently this week, for two reasons: 1) there's a LOT of buzz in the blog- and twitter-spheres from and about NTEN members because of last week's conference, so I'll be truncating the summaries; and 2) I want to take this opportunity to share my thoughts about the conference and the NTEN community -- and thank everyone for the great experience.

First up, here's an abbreviated round-up of the 08NTC-related posts from members:

Join Michelle Murrain and NTEN for the webinar, "OpenOffice.org: The Free and Open Source Office Suite".

OpenOffice.org is a free and open source office suite with the same (and in some ways more) functionality as most of MS Office. It reads and writes MS Office file formats, and has a native file format that is an open standard, which protects data integrity and access forever. Learn about how you can use OpenOffice.org today in your organization.

When: Tuesday, February 26th, 11 am PT / 2 PM ET

Cost: $25 for NTEN Members, $50 for Non-members

Presented By: Michelle Murrain, NOSI

> Learn more and register today!

LOLnptechLet's start with the How-Tos.

NTEN member Amy Sample Ward points her blog readers to a helpful how-to published by Global Voices, "Blogging for a Cause". I think Amy's doing a good job of this herself!

Michelle Murrain, NTEN Board member, continues her helpful series of posts about open source tools by discussing Filezilla, an FTP application. She also includes a helpful post about data portability, pointing out that, with more organizations working in and with Web 2.0, they need to understand what data portability is and why open standards are important.

Judi Sohn offers an update on her organization, C3, which was recently featured on Lifetime TV. She also catches her readers up on staff additions, technology implementations, and the sad loss of one of their advocates.

Flikr photo by david_wilmotI just read this awesome article on CNET about Cameron Sinclair, winner of the 2006 TED Prize and founder of the Open Architecture Network. In their own words, OAN is "...an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design."

By open source, they mean they compile, share, and then implement the ideas and resources of, well, everyone and anyone who contributes via their online network. What's amazing about this is that Sinclair and his organization have not only embraced the tools of Web 2.0 and open source development, but the concept, as well. And they've found a real-world application of it.

In a way, the physical blueprints of, say, an innovative design that can help save a village in Ecuador, have been open sourced.

Most of us in this community have talked about and implemented social networking tools to raise funds or build engagement for a campaign. We've created social change, but it's been somewhat abstract change. The OAN actually applies the tools and concept to change the planet's landscape physically.

From CNET's interview with Sinclair:

NTEN and NOSI are collaborating on a webinar series on free and open source software. Have questions about implementing open source software? Wonder about how Joomla or CiviCRM worked? Want to hear about people who've implemented open source applications? Learn about these things and more from FOSS expert Michelle Murrain!

You've gotten used to evaluating software for use in your organization. You have a specific need to fill, you look around for the list of software that can fill that need, make sure that the feature set matches, that you have the budget, and that the company or vendor is reputable, and can provide the support you need. But how do you evaluate free and open source software?

Michelle Murrain and the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) have just published an update to their excellent "Choosing and Using Free and Open Source Software: A primer for nonprofits". If your organization is considering a move to Open Source software (or if you want to push it in that direction), you should give this well-written guide a read.

The heart of the primer is found in Chapter 3, "How should you decide if FOSS will work for you?" Michelle writes, "All organizations should consider implementing FOSS. But in any organization, it is necessary to make a case for what can be a significant internal change." She then lays out a cogent overview of the costs and potential value of FOSS, with case studies to illustrate key points.

Microsoft announced today that it will make the source code for its .Net Framework freely available under its Shared Source license, essentially opening the source, rather than open sourcing, their popular development platform.

For those who accept the Microsoft Reference License -- the MS-RL, certainly not to be confused with the MS-PL or the MS-CL -- the source code will be available for download, but not modification.

The significance of this? Andrew Brust, Chief of New Technology at Twenty-Six New York, tells eWeek, "Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .Net Framework libraries are implemented, and in turn enable developers to build better applications and make even better use of them."

While Open Source has been widely embraced in the server and CMS markets, it has yet to take off in the CRM field, so I'm glad to see that the Code for Change Team has a new release of CiviCRM Standalone out there. I hope they keep the momentum going.

Things I really like about it (after noodling for about 15 minutes):

• It works with MyOpenID. Shouldn't everything work with an OpenID?
• The admin panel is so easy to understand!
• It's blazin' fast on their test server.

Many features need more work, but this release is REALLY early. I can say that I think it's starting to look like the real deal. I hope that they'll spend some time prettifying it, too. I'm a sucker for a pretty application.

The growth of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – what we in the U.S. loosely refer to as "nonprofits" – has been not only worldwide, but deep, as NGOs have intertwined themselves with the development world. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has experienced rapid growth as well, and given the competition NGOs face for limited resources, free software, so long as it works, and works well, can give budget-conscious managers the chance to allocate money to more pressing concerns. The problem is, with so much FOSS, how can you choose the right package for your organization?