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Disaster Bound and Open (Free) Technologies


Fostering social change through free technologies

About This Site and Drupal:
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Disaster Bound is built using Drupal. Distributed under the GPL ("GNU General Public License") Drupal is a highly configurable open source content management system maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers worldwide.

There are plenty of well recognized content management platforms developed under an open source philosophy besides Drupal, such as Mambo, Joomla, WordPress or Plone, and plenty more are joining them. These efforts alongside those of programmers, advocates, and users in all areas of digital technology, from content management systems to word processors, from mapping to servers, constitute a collaborative effort that permeates and stimulates the fair development and access to resources and innovative tools that look to explore a more sustainable and widespread approach to growth. While we are far from witnessing the disappearance of proprietary software despite the emergence of other economic and knowledge models, the growing presence of open source options next to proprietary practices often stimulates competition and the improvement of these tools, which otherwise typically fall into oligopolistic or monopolistic practices.

About Open (Free) Source
In order to further understand some common ground in the approach of Disaster Bound and free software it is useful to look at the explanation offered by the GNU project:

"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run a program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her. "

Continues at The Free Software Definition.

Thanks again, and again, and again to David for all his knowledge and continued support to set these platforms, help me to keep them running, and pointing the way.

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