[GNUz] [Fwd: [NZOSS-OpenChat] Sahana wins the 2006 social benefit award]

[Rik Tindall]

-------- Original Message --------
To: NZOSS OpenChat <openchat@nzoss.org.nz>
From: Gavin Treadgold <gav@rediguana.co.nz>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:19:35 +1200
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
Subject: [NZOSS-OpenChat] Sahana wins the 2006 social benefit award

Some exciting news about a FOSS project that Brent Wood and I are
involved in. We'd gladly have others contribute as well - it's for a
really good cause! ;)

Cheers Gav

Sahana wins the 2006 social benefit award
<http://www.fsf.org/social-benefit-award-2006>

Sahana, an entirely volunteer effort to create technology for
managing large-scale relief efforts, is the recipient of the 2006
Free Software Foundation Award for Projects of Social Benefit.

Colombo, Sri Lanka and Cambridge, Massachussets---March 26, 2007---
Sahana, an entirely volunteer effort to create technology for
managing large-scale relief efforts, is the recipient of the 2006
Free Software Foundation Award for Projects of Social Benefit. Sahana
was created, in the wake of the tsunami that devastated Southeast
Asia in 2004, to compensate for the devastating consequences of a
government attempt to manually manage the process of locating
victims, distributing aid and coordinating volunteers.

The Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit is presented
to a free software project that intentionally and significantly
benefits society through collaboration to accomplish an important
social task.

Speaking at the award ceremony, the Sahana project leader Chamindra
de Silva said, "We are deeply honored to receive this award and were
so excited we traveled half way around the world from Sri Lanka to
attend the ceremony today. The Sahana project is all about a cohesive
disaster response between multiple agencies and bringing them
together to help victims.  None of this would have been possible
without the work of the wider free software community, and we would
not have been able to bring benefit to the victims and the people who
help the victims without that. It is a credit to the whole community."

Richard Stallman, President and Founder of the Free Software
Foundation, in presenting the award said, "We were inspired to create
this award when we heard of the tremendous good the Sahana project
was able to achieve through the use of free software. With this award
we give recognition to their efforts."

The founding team, made up of Sri Lankan technology workers, worked
around the clock for three days to produce the first release of the
software that was quickly adopted by their country's government. The
software resolves common coordination problems that arise during a
disaster and thus facilitates the search for missing people, aid and
volunteer management, and victim tracking across refugee camps.

Sahana is built completely on donated funds and volunteer effort
coordinated by Lanka Software Foundation. It has been officially
deployed by the governments of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippies,
and Indonesia. It was also part of the Strong Angel III, a test of US
civil and military disaster response.

The members of the founding team that traveled from Colombo to
Cambridge to accept the award were, Chamindra de Silva, project lead,
as well as lead developers Pradeeper Dharmendra, Ravindra de Silva
and Mifan Careem.

Every year, three finalists are nominated for the award by the free
software community. This year's other two finalists were Project
Gutenberg and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Previous winners of the free software award:

     * 2005 Wikipedia

About Sahana

For more information about Sahana, please visit http://
www.sahana.lk/. Parties interested in contributing to Sahana should
send an email to donate@sahana.lk.

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software-particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants-and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site,
located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about
GNU/Linux. Donations to
support their work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. They are
headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.

Press Contact: For more information about this announcement please
contact Peter Brown at +1-617-542-5942 or pr@fsf.org

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- Am wanting to answer this post on NZOSS-OpenChat, with congrats & 
announce/invite re http://www.infohelp.co.nz/fsanz-constitution.html 
which is fully developed for local purposes now, ready for G/LUGs to 
consider.

- Any last points / objections please?

Regards
-- 
Rik