OASIS summit, 14 Sep, BIC Bangalore.

OASIS summit, 14th (Thu) September 2023, BIC - Bangalore. RSVP at https://oasishq.org/summit-2023

A bit of history

The FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) for social development efforts and experiments that we have undertaken at the FOSS United foundation over the last few years introduced us to other like-minded organisations engaged in similar work. These collective efforts, some great technologies that have come as a result, and years of conversations have culminated in the formation of an alliance of diverse organisations—OASIS (Open-source Alliance for Social Innovation and Sustainability). Systemic change cannot be induced in silos. Such efforts needs large scale collaboration and a culture of sharing. That organisations that have been thinking and working alike with the same goals, organically gravitated towards an alliance, thus, is only natural—in the true spirit of FOSS.

Founding members of the alliance: ASPIRe/Ashoka, FOSS United, GitHub, Tech4Dev, Tech4Good Community, Tech4Good Labs, TinkerHub

PS: That many orgs trying to do tech for social good all have names starting with "Tec4*" has been a new learning for me :P

PS2: GPT-4 coined the acronym OASIS.

Tech for social development

There are numerous organizations, social entrepreneurs, and changemakers who do remarkable work across a wide range of fields—climate change, environment, education, health, sanitation, livelihoods, nutrition, skills, and agriculture to name a few. While the industry has leap-frogged with technological advancements over the last decade leading to a massive startup and tech boom, much of the social development world has not managed to harness this, despite the exponential growth of high quality, easy to use, FOSS technologies. The technologists and engineers, we, are of course, in the private sector, and tend to have practically no connection to the social development world. This surprising chasm became evident to me over the years through personal interactions, volunteering, and through the work we do at the Rainmatter Foundation and FOSS United .

Really though, in 2023, there is no reason for it to be this way. Availability of technology and cost are no longer show stoppers. The biggest bottleneck is the lack of technical capacity, skills, and awareness. The lack of an ecosystem that facilitates this.

There are a whole classes of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) technologies that are high quality, low maintenance, extensible that make what may have been previously unattainable or even impossible, possible. Technologies that once setup, can practically keep running with no maintenance—at scale. Sophisticated technologies that the largest corporations in the world use, which can be installed in 5 minutes. Elsewhere, I have written extensively on how we have built Zerodha , now a large commercial enterprise, from the ground up entirely on FOSS technologies.

In 2023, technology has no reason to be a cost centre or a money sink. A social development organisation does not need to become a technology company or have an army of engineers to equip themselves with high quality FOSS that enhances their work. The open-source, open-data Malayalam dictionary Olam, that I started in 2010, has 2+ million users monthly. It costs a grand total of $5 (~ ?415) a month to run an auto-pilot.

In 2023, for the vast majority of social development organisations and social entrepreneurs, there is no need to build technology from scratch. There is only a need to re-use, re-purpose, and share.

In 2023, FOSS truly makes it possible to dream big; to focus on the important work with technology as an aid and an accelerant, not a bottleneck.

I couldn't have said this in 2018, but in 2023, I can, with deep conviction and evidence.

How?

Realistically, it is not possible to expect a non-tech organization to magically adopt FOSS in the same way an organization with tech expertise would. Building tech capacity in the sector requires an ecosystem of supporting stakeholders—non-profits, for-profits, tech consultants, service providers, both budding and experienced techies, interns, volunteers, funders, participation of public and private institutions, and more. With the right balance of awareness, hand-holding, education, and more importantly, a cultural shift, such an ecosystem can achieve a certain critical mass that can self-sustain and have significant positive impact. I have been witnessing signs of this first-hand.

It is important to note that the goal here is not to provide technology services for free (as in cost) to non-tech organisations. This is not an act of “charity”. The goal is to bridge the massive gap in FOSS technology awareness, knowledge, and access between the tech world and the social development world, to enable discovery of high quality FOSS that solves common and widespread problems, and to enable social dev organisations to focus on their work without having to waste huge amounts of time and money on futile technology pursuits.

This is of course, an experiment. All of this is easier said than done, but my conviction in this and pile of evidence for this thesis has grown steadily over the years. The promise of FOSS "low code" and "no code" class of technologies have opened up previously impossible avenues.

Needless to say, the goal here is definitely not for technologists to swoop in proposing magic-bullet technology solutions to human and social problems!

OASIS Summit 2023

To kick start the collective efforts of the alliance and hopefully sparks of an ecosystem, the alliance is organising a summit next week. It will host guests with immense experience and accomplishments from the social development and FOSS world and will feature talks, panel discussions, workshops, FOSS experience centers, and project showcases to delve deep into the aforementioned ideas.

If all of this sounds interesting, please join us on the 14th (Thu) of September 2023 at BIC - Bangalore. Check out the full agenda and RSVP at https://oasishq.org/summit-2023

I am excited. I will see you there.