an IT strategy that can be replicated

[Daniel Pocock]

There have been a couple of threads on the list this week about the
creation of individual teams to manage some FSFE services and the type
of service that the system-hackers are offering to provide.

One of the bigger issues associated with all this is the question of
whether FSFE's IT model can be replicated by other organizations
(including non-profits) of similar size.

The default strategy for many organizations today seems to start with a
Facebook group and graduate to Google Apps, possibly outsourcing a web
site where money is spent on appearance and dodgy SEO services rather
than development of any real functionality.

This brings me to a few questions:

- should it be a priority for FSFE's IT strategy to be easily
replicated, so that we can say to other organizations that they can
follow the FSFE sysadmin wiki and they will be up and running in a few
hours?

- are there other small non-profit organizations that already
demonstrate best practice for volunteer-run IT with free software and
should we build a list of them?  For example, is FSF's or Debian's
strategy considered suitable for other organizations to replicate?

- going beyond the scope of Linux distributions like Debian, there are
solutions like ClearOS[1] that aim to provide a turn-key office/small
business solution, is anybody maintaining a list of these and would it
be more productive for FSFE to move onto something like that and
individual volunteers (such as the blog team) would contribute to that
project?

Regards,

Daniel



1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearOS