Humanitarian-FOSS

The Humanitarian-FOSS concepts and community were inspired by the Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System which was a leading example where Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) was used to help alleviate human suffering during the December 2004 Asian Tsunami. The community was started with an informal Yahoo! group that was open for anyone to join. The history and aspirations of this mailing list is best captured by the mailing list sampler.

Alignment of FOSS to Humanitarian Software

There are multiple reasons why Free and Open Source software finds a NATURAL fit in Humanitarian applications.

The main reasons are:

  • Very few countries and organizations today can afford to invest a lot of resources in disaster management when there is no disaster present. While this is obviously true of poor, developing nations, it is also true of richer, developed countries. This is because there are always higher priority items that need funding compared to disaster preparations for a disaster that may or may not happen. A FOSS approach provides a low budget, volunteer-driven and global way to build such systems
  • There is not much commercial interest in developing solutions in this domain, because often during humanitarian disasters proprietary software licenses are given at no cost. With FOSS there need not even be any delays in getting permission for a license as anyone has the freedom to download the software and use it.
  • Such systems should be shared, developed and owned globally, because the problems they address are all too common for any country dealing with a disaster effectively, making such software a global public good. The FOSS development and community mechanisms have a proven track record in building such goods.
  • The global community of IT volunteers can Contribute their goodwill to such causes by using their skills to develop and customize FOSS for the disaster Situations
  • As in conflict situations, during disasters segregation arises between governments, NGOs and INGOs. The main reason is often the urgent circumstances, the lack of transparency and the lack of coordination capacity. So an open, transparent and globally owned system is more likely to be trusted to mediate between the groups. It will also help organizations self-distribute themselves based on what other organizations are doing in the affected region.
  • Finally no two disasters are alike. There are often localizations and customizations needed for the software before it can get applied effectively to the disasters. Some of these localizations include adding additional metadata about the entities in the system or translating the system to handle entry in a particular language. With FOSS, anyone is free to make the needed customizations without restriction.

Going the free/open source software way can address the above concerns, and using the open source development model, it is possible to develop this software at a much reduced cost compared to pure proprietary development models. Thus if a small team is driving such a project and ensuring the quality of the product, then it is possible to get a lot of assistance from the global IT community to make those systems truly exceptional.

Alignment to the Red Cross Code of Conduct

Most organizations and movement in the Humanitarian sector reference and adhere to the Red Cross/Crescent Code of Conduct. The concept of Humanitarian-FOSS is aligned to this code especially in the following areas:

1. The Humanitarian imperative comes first

Project like Sahana have this as The Primary goal irrespective of the Free and Open Source aspirations.

2. Aid is given regardless of the race, creed or nationality of the recipients and without adverse distinction of any kind. Aid priorities are calculated on the basis of need alone.

There is no restriction on who downloads, modifies and uses Free and Open Source Software.

5. We shall respect culture and custom.

Free and Open Source communities are most often global communities and thus represents an integration of various cultures. The tools are often deployed by locals in the region of the disaster or crisis.

6. We shall attempt to build disaster response on local capacities.

Local communities are encouraged to build capacity on the knowledge of FOSS tools. A good example are the LUGs (Linux User Groups). The Humanitarian-ICT community also promotes the concept of HUGs (Humanitarian User Groups), which help to build capacity on the understanding and use of Humanitarian-ICT tools.

The Humanitarian-ICT community

The Humanitarian ICT community consists of a global group of emergency management experts, humanitarian consultants, interested members from the NGO community and developers that strive to build applications to address the ICT needs of humanitarian problems. Currently they provide leadership on the Humanitarian-FOSS concept and the Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System. As of writing this article the members in this community amount to about 170+ people from around the world from countries such as Australia, Sri Lanka, UK, US, Germany, Thailand, Netherlands and New Zealand. The community was founded initial as a mailing list by Paul Currion a humanitarian consultant and Chamindra de Silva, the project lead of Sahana FOSS disaster management system to address the need of critical software (especially FOSS) in support of this domain.

ProgresS of Humanitarian-FOSS concept

The concept is recognized by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) where such ideals are a specialization of the FSF goals to "help thy neighbour" with software. The FSF has created a new Award for Projects of Social Benefit that was inspired by this concept and the Sahana project. The concept is also accepted by the UNDP IOSN network which as a section deadicated to Humanitarian-FOSS

Where to find the community

The community predominantly operates over the Humanitarian ICT mailing list and also record all their conclusions at the Reliefsource WIKI.