Plone NGO Mailing List Christian Aid go for Microsoft over Open Source

[Matt Lee]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 03:17:27PM +0000, rgregory at oxfam.org.uk wrote:

> I do think Sharepoint will become a major player in this niche for NGOs as
> it will be shipped as part of Windows 2007.  One of the major advantages it
> has (amoung many failings!) is that over time it will be integrated with
> Groove.  This will enable it to support both online and off line working.
> This is a major issue for NGOs such as Oxfam and Christian Aid where we
> have many staff working in situations where there is minimal communications
> infrastructure.

I find it a shame that so many of the non-profit organisations that
aim to empower people and offer them greater freedom, feel the need to
rely on proprietary software in such a great way. I would have hoped
that they would in fact be taking a lead in ensuring that their ways
of working were not locked up in proprietary systems, such as
Sharepoint and Groove. Maybe this will change in 2007, now that
systems built upon Java can be truly free software.

Although it may not be elegant, email is still a very good way to
allow you to work offline, and as they say, if it isn't broken, don't
fix it :)

matt

-- 
Matt Lee
Chief Webmaster, GNU Project - http://www.gnu.org/ - Free as in Freedom
Free Software Foundation - Free Software, Free Society - http://www.fsf.org/