I’ve been on the Advisory Board of the Open Source Business Resource for some time, and though I contributed an article two years ago, this month I was fortunate enough to be the Guest Editor for the December issue on Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS). This issue is an excellent resource for learning more about HFOSS, its overall landscape and emerging HFOSS business models springing from both academia and industry. It’s a great primer for anyone interested in contributing to software projects that benefit humanity, or as my colleagues at the Humanitarian FOSS project describe it “free and open source software for society.”
If you’re interested in contributing to HFOSS, you may want to consider attending one of this weekend’s Random Hacks of Kindness events. Groups of software developers will convene this weekend in more than 20 cities worldwide to develop open source applications that address disaster risk and management needs. Registration is still open for most cities, but if you cannot attend in person you might want to consider checking out the software packages already under development and contributing to them.
Hawthorn Landings 
Really excited to see someone in Oregon was involved with this issue! I’m a humanitarian consultant, newly relocated to Oregon, and while I’m not an IT specialist and not usually involved in IT endeavors in my work abroad, I do try to advocate for open source tools. I get an incredible amount of pushback from local IT folks and INGO decision-makers, for various reasons I won’t go into here. This issue of OSBR will help a LOT in my advocacy, so, thanks! Hope to meet face-to-face at some point.
Jayne: Glad it was useful for you! If you are based in the Portland area, I am sure our paths will cross at one of the many tech events.