Ourproject.org

OurProject.org

Motto	Free Software and Free Knowledge for a Free Society
Formation	2002
Type	Non-profit
Purpose	Educational
Headquarters	Madrid
Region served	Worldwide
Membership	private persons
Main organ	Assembly
Affiliations	Member project of Comunes organization
Website	OurProject.org

OurProject.org (OP) is a web-based collaborative free content repository. It acts as a central location for the construction and maintenance of social/cultural/artistic projects, providing web space and tools, and focusing in free knowledge.^[1][2] It claims to extend the ideas and methodology of free software^[3] to social areas and free culture in general.^[4][5] Since September 2009, Ourproject is under the Comunes Association umbrella,^[6] and gave birth to the Kune collaborative social network for groups.

Philosophy

Ourproject was founded in 2002 with the aims of hosting and boosting the cooperative work done in multiple domains (cultural, artistic, educational^[7]), with one specific condition: the results of the projects should remain freely accessible under a free license.^[8] This is understood in a broad way, as not all the available licenses are cataloged as free/libre (such as several Creative Commons licenses).^[9][10]

Its non-profit perspective is partially imposed on its online community of projects, as no advertising is allowed in the hosted webpages. Thus, OurProject projects have mainly been carried out by social movements, university-supported groups,^[5][11] some free software related projects,^[12] cooperatives,^[13] artist collectives,^[14] activist groups,^[15] informal groups^[16] and non-profits.^[17]

Current situation/Condition

As of December 2011, OurProject.org was hosting 1,015 projects and had 3,372 project admins, with a constant linear growth rate. It received 1,300,000 visits/month^[18] and had a PageRank of 6^[19] and the 14th position on public Gforge sites,^[20] being the first of them not restricted to just free software projects. In fact, the GNU Project highlights it as "Free knowledge & free culture" project.^[21] It claims to be the most successful wiki farm with full free version and without ads (comparison). It has presence especially in Spain, Latin America and China.^[22]

Relevant projects that are using Ourproject infrastructure include:

• the Critical Mass movement pages reference for the Hispanic movement^{[23][24][24][25]}
• The Spanish cooperative for Organic farming "Bajo el Asfalto está la Huerta", reference in the Food sovereignty movement^{[26][27][28][29]}
• the Kune project, a federated collaborative social network^[30][31]
• the main Free Software association of Argentina^[32][33]
• The community website of the Ubuntu Spanish community ^[34]
• the internal work group of the P2P Foundation.^[35]

During 2011, it has attracted interest by the new wave of protesting social movements in several areas:

• It has hosted several projects related to the Arab Spring movements from Lebanon,^[36] Palestine^[37][38] and Syria.^[39][40]
• The social movement of 2011 Spanish protests repeatedly used its services.^{[41][42][43][44][45]}
• The American Occupy movement is recommending its use in its howto ^[46] and it recently began being used.^[47][48]

Software used

OurProject.org uses a multi-language multiple-topic adapted version of GForge. Its aim is to widen the spectrum of Free Software ideals, focusing in free social and cultural projects more than in Free Software. Thus, its software was originally a kind of social and multiple-topic Sourceforge following the Free culture movement. Nowadays, the Ourproject community has been involved in the development of the collaborative environment Kune and eventually this would cover all current Ourproject functionalities.

Licenses allowed

The main condition for hosting projects at OP is that the content created during the project must be released under one of these licenses:

• Creative Commons, Attribution
• Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike
• Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Open Publication License
• Libre Designs General Public License (LDGPL)
• Design Science License
• Free Art License
• Artistic License
• GNU General Public License (GPL)
• GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
• Affero General Public License (AGPL)
• BSD License
• Mozilla Public License
• Public Domain
• No license

Services

OP provides several free Internet services to free/libre projects collaborators:

• Web hosting with subdomain (projectname).ourproject.org or Virtual Hosting
• Mailing list
• Web Forums
• SSH account for full customization
• MySQL database
• permanent file archival (FTP)
• Wiki ^[49]
• Web-administration
• E-mail Alias @users.ourproject.org
• Periodical full backups
• For software projects: SCM (CVS, SVN)

Other secondary services:

• Task management
• News service
• Documentation management
• Surveys
• Registering
• File publication system
• Stats

Partners

After 9 years of existence, Ourproject has developed partnership with several organizations:

• GRASIA (Group of Software Agents, Engineering & Applications):^[50] Research group of Universidad Complutense de Madrid, it is offering joint grants to students and providing hardware resources.^[51]
• American University of Science and Technology (Beirut): offering students the chance of collaborating with Ourproject receiving trainings in administration, or framing their senior project and Master theses in this environment.
• IEPALA Foundation:^[52] It has joined Ourproject, together with other free software initiatives, to build a common Data Center.^[53]
• Xsto.info: Free software cooperative^[54] that has been providing technical infrastructure to Ourproject without charge, and recently joined the mentioned collective Data Center.

See also

• Comunes Collective
• Kune (software)
• Libre knowledge
• Free content
• Copyleft
• Open content
• Free software movement
• Open educational resources
• Gratis versus Libre
• Comparison of wiki farms

References

1. "Definition and creation of free projects". libreprojects.ourproject.org.
2. Camino, S.; F. Javier; M. Jiménez Gañán; S. Frutos Cid (2008). "Collaborative Development within Open Source Communities". Encyclopedia of Networked and Virtual Organizations. IGI Global, Information Science Reference. ISBN 978-1-59904-885-7.
3. "There's Life after Microsoft – Free Software Advocates". Inter Press Service News Agency. 24 January 2004. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
4. "The GNU project links Ourproject.org cataloguing it as "Free knowledge & free culture"".
5. "Extrapolando la filosofía del Software Libre a otras áreas del conocimiento". Presentation of ourproject in the World Cultural Forum. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
6. "The Comunes Association is the current umbrella organisation for OurProject".
7. Kleinberg, David (2008). Handbook for Language Learning Resources at Winthrop University (PDF). South Carolina, USA: Winthrop University.
8. "Como crear un Proyecto Libre (How to create a Free/Libre Project)". Rebelión. 13 September 2004. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
9. Rodríguez Mederos, M. (2007). "The dissemination of creations in the digital era: the Copyleft as a means to distribute creations in the digital era". ACIMED 15 (1).
10. Mass Araya, Elizabeth Roxana; Borsetti Gregorio Vidotti, Silvana Aparecida (15 July 2012). "Creative Commons: a Convergence Model Between the Ideal of Commons and the Possibilities of Creation in Contemporary TimesOpposed to Copyright Impediments". In Baptista, Ana Alice; Linde, Peter; Lavesson, Niklas; et al. Social Shaping of Digital Publishing: Exploring the Interplay Between Culture and Technology. IOS Press. pp. 3–11. ISBN 9781614990642. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
11. De Pedro, Xavier; et al. (2006). "Writing documents collaboratively in Higher education using Traditional vs. Wiki methodology (I)". The Fourth Congress of the International University Teaching and Innovation (IV CIDUI). 10.
12. "Linux, para todos los públicos". El País. 12 May 2006. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
13. "Las 'slow cities' abanderan la utopía del decrecimiento". Público. 9 August 2008. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
14. "Jornada de Apoyo al Pueblo Palestino (Madrid)". Kaos en la Red. 6 November 2008. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
15. "Reclama las calles contra el desalojo de La Alarma". Kaos en la Red. 16 July 2007. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
16. "Unos 3.000 ciclistas se concentrarán en Madrid entre hoy y el domingo en una nueva edición de 'La criticona'". Europa Press news agency. 28 April 2010. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
17. "Se abre una nueva cooperativa agroecológica en San Martín de la Vega". Rebelion. 29 January 2004. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
18. "Ourproject boosts!". Comunes Blog. 2 October 2011. Retrieved 13 December 2011.
19. "Alexa traffic details of Ourproject.org". September 10, 2009.
20. "Sites Using GForge". September 10, 2009.
21. "The GNU project links Ourproject.org cataloging it as "Free knowledge & free culture"".
22. "Alexa traffic details of Ourproject.org". December 15, 2011.
23. "Spanish bicycle Critical Mass movement". December 15, 2011.
24. "World call for the bicycle Critical Mass movement". December 15, 2011.
25. Caprarelli, Giuseppe (2007). "A Plus in Quality of Life". Workshop 3a: Self-Organized European Bike Workshops. Rome, Italy.
26. "Spanish bicycle Critical Mass movement". December 15, 2011.
27. Machado, H.; A. Suset; GJ Martín; FR Funes-Monzote (2009). "From the reductionist approach to the system approach in Cuban agriculture: a necessary change of vision". Pastos y Forrajes 32 (3): 1–1.
28. Fominaya, C.F. (2007). "Autonomous Movements and the Institutional Left: Two Approaches in Tension in Madrid's Anti-globalization Network". South European Society & Politics 12 (3): 335–358.
29. Vivas, E. (2010). "El consum agroecològic a l’Estat espanyol: una opció política1". Reflexions sobre les alimentacions contemporànies: 159.
30. "Kune Project collaborative platform". December 15, 2011.
31. "Kune project in Ohloh". Retrieved 3 February 2011.
32. "Solar, Free Software association of Argentina". December 15, 2011.
33. Saravia, D.; H. Solar. "Diccionario conceptual del conocimiento libre".
34. "Ubuntu-ES community website workgroup". December 15, 2011.
35. "Work group and mailing lists of the P2P Foundation". December 15, 2011.
36. "Workgroup for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in Beirut, Lebanon". December 15, 2011.
37. "Work group for a campaign for the Palestinian refugees". December 15, 2011.
38. "Palestinian Youth Conference". December 15, 2011.
39. "'Beirut Streets', pro-Syrian revolution protests in Beirut". December 15, 2011.
40. "Pro-Syrian revolution news". December 15, 2011.
41. "Work group of the 15-M Movement camp in Valencia, Spain". December 15, 2011.
42. "Work group of the 15-M Movement in the Tietar area, Spain". December 15, 2011.
43. "Work group of the 15-M Movement focused on workers". December 15, 2011.
44. "Work group of the 15-M Movement in the Sineu area, Spain". December 15, 2011.
45. "Work group of the 15-M Movement focused on education in the Mallorca area, Spain". December 15, 2011.
46. "#HowToOccupy, howtos, methods, techniques and knowledge for the Occupy movement". December 15, 2011.
47. "Work group of the Occupy movement focused on communication in the Fredericton area, Canada". December 15, 2011.
48. "Study group of the North Carolina State University focused on the Occupy movement". December 15, 2011.
49. "Characteristics of OP wiki". wikiindex.org.
50. "Grasia Research Group homepage". Retrieved 3 February 2011.
51. "Comunes Acknowledgements". Retrieved 15 December 2011.
52. "IEPALA Foundation homepage". Retrieved 3 February 2011.
53. "Building a collective Data Centre". Retrieved 15 December 2011.
54. "Xsto.info free software cooperative homepage". Retrieved 15 December 2011.

External links

• OurProject.org main website
• OurProject FAQ
• Presentation about OurProject.org in the Cultural World Forum in Rio do Janeiro