Documents:Project Principles

From ssc.aspirationtech.org

Social Source Commons Project Principles

The following enumerate guiding principles of Social Source Commons initiative.

Implementation guidelines

• Each project milestone delivered by SSC will have independent, concrete value. This will insure ongoing relevance, and insure the work done is worth the time invested.
• SSC will use existing Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and tools whenever possible, creating a minimal necessary base of new software components to debug and maintain.
• SSC will be self-documenting and transparent. SSC software engineering will employ best practices of FOSS community-driven development, publicly posting documents and other resources and engaging all stakeholders to participate and help drive the solution.
• All code used and developed must be internationalized and localizable from the earliest possible point of engineering, not as an afterthought or "later phase" enhancement.
• Requirements scenarios and test cases will be weighted toward international contexts, with no optimistic assumptions about connectivity and capacity.
• SSC data will be collected with an agnostic approach to divisive issues such as licensing and intellectual property. While a primary goal of SSC is to support access to FOSS, it will be necessary to collect a "universe" of data, both to deliver maximal values to the stakeholders that use the service as well as to put FOSS offerings in the proper perspective alongside appropriate community source and proprietary applications.

Value Delivery

• SSC will prioritize knowledge transfer over information aggregation. While the latter is an important component of the former, the tools will strive to empower those passionate about sharing their knowledge of non-profit/non-governmental organizational (NPOs/NGOs) technology to transfer it to their peers.
• SSC will strive to connect existing resources and "project silos" to build informed and unified views of the "landscape", working to complement rather than duplicate existing resources.
• SSC will serve as both "scaffolding" and "glue". As scaffolding, it will provide structure on which to build top-down views of NGO technology, delivering that information to a global set of client views. As glue, it will connect existing technology resources for NGOs.
• SSC will deliver a set of FOSS tools that empower anyone wanting to create their own SSC-based hub or integrate their sites and resources into the SSC network.
• Existing FOSS repositories and directories (e.g., Source Forge, Swik or Launchpad) offer ”raw" lists of FOSS technology, but fail to provide relevant "top-down" views necessary for proper exploration and use of FOSS by NPOs/NGOs. SSC will "front end" code repositories and other resources, linking the FOSS products to related documentation, services and events in language and structure relevant to the NPO/NGO sectors.
• SSC will incorporate user-supplied data as a core component. The amount of information that is user-supplied will be directly tied to SSC's ability to motivate users to engage and contribute.
• SSC will identify needs that are not currently addressed in the NPO/NGO sector. It will offer a framework to specify requirements and drive development to fill those gaps.