The primer, "Choosing and Using Open Source Software" was translated into Russian, by a Russian IBMer. We figured it was at least fun, and possibly informative, to provide it here. It's attached to this post.

As you can see from the site, we have a new logo! Thanks to Noah Scalin, from Another Limited Rebellion. If anyone wants to design us a new drupal theme that fits with the new logo, we'd love to have you do it. You wouldn't get paid, but we'd shout your name out from the rooftops!

There has been a lot going on with NOSI both in front of, and behind the scenes. We've had three salons, two Penguin days, a couple of sessions at NTC, and participation in the Nonprofit Developers Summit, all in the course of four months! We'll be synthesizing what we've learned into a strategic plan, which we'll share with everyone and get comments and feedback on the direction we'll be going in over the next year or so.

We'll be announcing a new project soon, and some other things. Stay tuned!

As you might have learned, in order to comment on the site, you need to sign up for an account. We're sorry about this - we get an incredible amount of comment spam and false accounts, so we don't have a choice - unless we want to spend all day cleaning up after bots.

Also, some of you have had to wait for much longer than we'd like before getting accounts activated - mostly that's due to the time it takes to wade through the dozen false accounts to find the good ones. But I think we're now all up to date, so every real person who has signed up for an account, is active.

If you just don't want to deal with this, but want to weigh in on the logo discussion, send me an email at michelle at nosi dot net.

Help NOSI pick a logo! We're in the beginning stages of choosing a logo - and these are the two directions our designer has worked on so far. The steering committee is split, so we decided to get community input. These are not final - there will be changes in color, and the like, but they are two very different directions, and we need some guidance.

Here's design idea #1:

Here's design idea #2:

What do you think? Leave a comment!

We had a great Penguin Day in DC today! There was an incredible amount of energy in the room, and lots of great conversations. We had a bunch of people talk about the kinds of barriers they find in the ability of nonprofits to adopt open source, and ways that NOSI can help to lower those barriers.

We've gotten some great ideas over the past 3 days, in conversations, in a strategy session, and at Penguin Day, and we'll be exited to share those ideas, and the actions they will spawn, over the next month or so.

There's a lot more to come.

Thanks to the wonderful folks of Aspiration and PICNet - it was a great collaboration!