More Koolaid please

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; I have the best job in the world.

I had a chance to meet up with some folks from the Meyer Memorial Trust as they wanted to learn more about what we’re up to here at the OSL. The Meyer Memorial Trust is the legacy of F. G. Meyer.

The MMT is a foundation that helps support non-profits in Oregon and Southwest Washington. They often come across proposals for money to fund software upgrades or solutions at these non-profits. The board of trustees never really felt right about just funding more proprietary software for a non-profit … they wanted to help change an organization and help others at the same time. Enter open source.

By partnering with FreeGeek they have been able to start to realize some of the open source goodness (to which I told them that was known as “drinking the koolaid” in the FOSS world — although now I’m most likely open to litigation from the Kraft Foods Corporation).

Moving forward, the Meyer Memorial Trust wants to continue to do open source goodness and to that end they are requiring all technology/software grant proposals to have at least considered open source. And why wouldn’t they? I think this is a fantastic idea … not only that, they will most likely start to see trends in the needs of non-profits and be able to identify projects that could help N non-profits. Cost savings there can free up dollars to help these same non-profits move forward and not get caught in the “hamster wheel” of proprietary software subscription.