Last weekend I attended a pair of nonprofit technology conferences in Philadelphia. There was tremendous interest in Open Source.
The attendees at the conferences spoke of open source software sharing values with nonprofits. I'd like our Mission Statement to be accessible to nonprogrammers and help them understand the degree to which their values are aligned with OpenACS.
Primarily the nonprofits look to Open Source to give to them. They want free code, they want features, they want usability. They don't think about what they can give back to us. But once they understand our community model and the idea occurs to them that they could give back, they seem very receptive to participating in a community.
OpenACS is making huge progress technically. I think we are more ready then ever to benefit from non-programmer volunteers and leaders.
A mission statement is just one step towards goals such as increasing nonprofit users and sites; nonprogrammer volunteers and perhaps becoming a nonprofit ourselves and getting grants directly.
With that background, please comment on the actual content of the Mission Statement. Our code is good because everyone thinks about the underlying processes of how things are done. Its the way great programmers think. I've noticed great marketing and publicity people don't seem to think that way. ;)
