Here's an open source initiative that  demonstrates the important role IT can have in assisting rescuers and response teams in times of disaster.  Currently, the IBM Crisis Response Team is working in Peru after the recent earthquake to help deploy Sahana for crisis and aid management related tasks. 

Sahana http://www.sahana.lk/  

Sahana means "Relief" in Sinhalese.

As the name itself implies, Sahana is a free and open source Disaster Management System.It mainly facilitates management of Missing people, disaster victims, Managing and administrating various organizations, managing camps and managing requests and assistance in the proper distribution of resources.

http://cvs.opensource.lk/

First weekly meeting for the CICweb development team. All are welcome! No tech skills are necessary: we need non-tech help!

This week's agenda:

-Schedule needs assessment date, get a coordinator
-What can we each contribute? Who wants which role?
-Overview of prior work goals list
-Find ways to get others' help: split tasks down so we coordinate others' contributions
-Motivating contributions from alumni, students

We now have a help page to guide new users through the CICweb!  It is linked through the top menu, and is currently promoted and sticky on the front page.  We will un-promote it at the end of the term, but will periodically bring it back to the front page when a membership drive or new term begins, to assist new users.

As soon as the image upload is worked out, the post will include 11 value-added screenshots to help explain details, preview the site features, and set up user expectations.  I used Fireworks to "illuminate" the screenshots and optimize them for fast loading. Image file sizes are 8 - 20 KB, averaging about 12 KB each.

BRAZIL: FREE SOFTWARE'S BIGGEST AND BEST FRIEND
Looking to save millions of
dollars in royalties and licensing fees, Brazil's president has instructed
government ministries and state-run companies to gradually switch from costly
operating systems made by
Microsoft and others to free operating systems,
like Linux. Brazil has also become the first country to require any company
or research institute that receives government financing to develop software
to license it as open-source, meaning the underlying software code must be
free to all. Now Brazil's government looks poised to take its free software
campaign to the masses. And once again Microsoft may end up on the sidelines.
By the end of April, the government plans to roll out a much ballyhooed
program called PC Conectado, or Connected PC, aimed at helping millions of
low-income Brazilians buy their first computers. And if the president's top
technology adviser gets his way, the program may end up offering computers
with only free software, including the operating system, handpicked by the
government instead of giving consumers the option of paying more for, say, a
basic edition of Microsoft Windows.

We should check out the Copyright and Creative Commons modules for Drupal. These would offer some great flexibility. Here's what they do (to quote Drupal):

The copyright management module can set and display a copyright/license for
a Drupal site and for any node. Licenses can be chosen from a built-in
list or those added by admins. It handles URLs to the full text of the
license and an associated image. Notices can be displayed in a block or
site footer. Book pages can optionally set a license for all children,
allowing each book or section to have its own license.

The Creative Commons module allows users to select and assign a Creative
Commons license to a node and any attached content. Additionally, the
site admin can select a license to assign to the entire site.

Nonprofit Open Source Almanac
http://wiki.advocacydev.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NonprofitOpenSourceAlmanac

Vision Statement: To
develop a definitive, living reference to help nonprofits understand open
source software and politics. This is intended as a guide that open source
advocates can use with nonprofits and can also serve as a foundational
interface for the user-facing portions of the website formerly known as
"social source forge.

Choosing Open Source: A guide for civil society organizations

http://www.commons.ca/articles/fulltext.shtml?x=335

Developed by Commons and the Association for Progressive Ccommunications, this guide provides civil society
organizations with both an introduction to open source and a framework
for finding software that will meet their needs. Designed to be
accessible and helpful to non-profit managers and others responsible
for high level technology decisions.

From the introduction...

"Open source software holds a great deal of potential for civil society
organizations. The most obvious benefit of open source software is free to use,
something that is attractive to organizations on a tight budget. However, it
also offers much more: better security, increased flexibility and the ability to
adapt software to meet local and organizational needs. And, open source software
is based on the kind of collaborative and cooperative principles that many civil
society organizations embrace.

Choosing and Using Open Source Software: A Primer for Non Profits

http://www.nosi.net/node/24

From the introduction...

"In this primer, we examine how open source software is developed, how
its costs and benefits are evaluated, how several nonprofits are using
it today, and how you can take concrete steps to advance it in your
organization. We also offer ideas on how to further advance the
applicability of OSS to the nonprofit sector."