CampaignFoundations.com

WASHINGTON - A federal grand jury indictment was unsealed today in Detroit charging 11 persons, including Alan M. Ralsky, his son-in-law Scott K. Bradley, and Judy M. Devenow, of Michigan, and eight others, including a dual national of Canada and Hong Kong and individuals from Russia, California, and Arizona, in a wide-ranging international fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mailing, or "spamming."

CampaignFoundations.com's Partners have both joined the Free Software Foundations' signon letter encouraging non-profits to forgo the proprietary lockin provided by Microsoft so-called Vista "upgrade".

"The same secure, stable, free software which runs CF's servers which host our clients' sites also runs our desktop computers," said Hugh Esco, a partner in the web application hosting and development firm, serving the needs of Green Parties, their candidates and Green minded non-profits. "The scope and pace of development within the Free Software community leaves few reasons to consider the proprietary alternatives. And the risks to our own freedom and the environment leave plenty of reasons why we ought to reject the proprietary options."

The Green Party of England and Wales today backed an international call from the Free Software Society (FSS), New Internationalist, Friends of the Earth International and People and Planet in calling on social activists and progressive organizations to join with them in rejecting Microsoft's Vista operating system, and to encourage instead the adoption and use of free open source software (FOSS).

The advent and use of free software is a promotion of the computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSS categorically state that free software 'is about freedom, not price. It is software whose authors intentionally extend users the freedoms to study, copy, modify and share their work. While proprietary software functions by dividing people and using technical restrictions to block communication between them, free software was created with individual freedom and social solidarity in mind.' (1) Derek Wall, Green Party male Principal Speaker, backs the call. "Free software offers social activists an alternative to what a system like Vista represents. Using free software, we can further social and environmental justice without supporting growth based on waste, control and short-term profit."

Rob Thornton last week announced the release of the first publicly available version of CiviVoter and a new drupal module called Canvasser. Development was supported by the Green Party of Canada. Rob describes this as a "Developers' Release", not yet ready for prime time. But that too shall come.

This story recounts the role which CampaignFoundations.com played in bringing this to the public.

When I was on staff with the Georgia Green Party I worked with other Green IT developers on what I at that time called pclSupport. It was envisioned as a collection of scripts designed to make the Georgia voter database accessible to the Precinct Campaign Leaders who could actually put it to use canvassing their neighborhoods in support of Green candidates.

If your campaign plan involves bringing together multiple staff or volunteers in an office setting to move the work of the campaign forward, reading this article could save you thousands of dollars or alternately make possible campaign capacity you might not have thought possible.

Its an investment, building an LTSP network, requiring some technical skills. But it could be a solution which makes a functioning office possible for a low-budget campaign. And its a solution which makes sense even if you are investing in all new equipment for every desktop. Using the client-server model lowers maintainance overhead. If every workstation in the office boots off of only one server, that means that you have only one server to upgrade, maintain, backup and secure from abusive access.

Long before one puts down a qualifying fee or appoints poll watchers or is sworn into public office, a candidate has got to get their own office in order. Consumer grade machines can now be had for $300.00. Even linux compatible hardware fax modems cost less than $80 these days. We don't have lots of money to spend on software and hardware, but we need to build an office machine capable of supporting the communication demands made by a modern campaign. This article explores some of those demands, takes a look at those requirements and suggests open source tools using open standard file formats which affordably allow you to interact with the world around you, while preserving your control over your data.

You've built a linux desktop. You've mounted the learning curve to configure the hardware (or paid someone else to do so) and you are able to do your own work on the machine. You've discovered that if you can point and click you can run a modern linux OS on your desktop.

But how is it you will ever relate to the rest of the world? What do you do with the MS attachments people send you? How do you enjoy the music distributed in formats for a Windows World?

First, for the impatient working in a gui environment, here is a quick mapping from the proprietary tools you may have used in the past to the tools now potentially available on your new linux installation.