Code for Social Change

Are you a programmer? Are you a computer science major? Or perhaps you simply write code in your free time? No matter your skill level, you can participate in open source projects right here at Swarthmore! Join Code for Social Change, and help the world become a kinder, gentler place.

Blackboard alternative

We have several ideas for projects, but our first task to set up a working free software alternative to Blackboard on campus. Several professors here have expressed frustration with the "bug-like behavior" of Blackboard, and are willing to switch to "anything functional". We intend to oblige them :-) Our current pet candidate is Moodle, because it just requires PHP and MySQL. All we're waiting for right now is for our local sysadmins to install MySQL, at which point it should be as simple as install->configure->run.

Distribute Free Software

That's free as in freedom, not as in beer folks... We want to make free software conveniently available and easy to use for Swarthmore students (and tomorrow, the world!). We will be giving away CD's such as TheOpenCD, which makes installing many popular open source programs for Windows a breeze, and Knoppix Linux, a great version of Linux that runs entirely off a CD, allowing people to try out Linux with no risk or commnittment. We will also try to make popular programs available in libraries both on and off campus, as suggested by Bob Kerr.

Creative Commons tech challenges

The next set of projects that we think we can tackle are the Tech Challenges put forth by CreativeCommons.org. The goal of these projects is generally to make it easy for computers to recognize and manipulate Creative Commons licenses, which are a set of alternatives to copyright and its unnecessary restrictions. Nelson's favorite project to date is the Mozcc extension for Mozilla and Firefox, which finds CC metadata on a webpage and displays in the browser in an aesthetically pleasing and non-intrusive manner.

Solve the world's technology problems

We've been thinking that we might want to expand the mission of Code for Social Change to include all facets of technology, including hardware. One possible ultimate goal might be to provide a complete community-based technology solution for the poor:

• Hardware: We could provide free computers, like Free Geek.
• Software: We can work on community-organizing software, such as Tiki, and support free software in general.
• Community Wireless Network / Internet Access: A Community Wireless Network (CWN) such as Seattle Wireless can be extremely useful in the short term as a way to enhance communication at the local level, and eventually could augment and maybe even replace the traditional Internet eventually. Just think, free wi-fi across the nation, in a truly decentralized structure, because the wi-fi network is generated by its users.