Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Open Source @ BSA - A Year Later

Last year this month, the Boy Scouts of America started an open source site at https://opensource.scouting.org/ You may notice that your browser won't open it automatically because there is a security certificate issue. I didn't really understand what the goal of the site was then and I'm still not quite sure I know now. I believe it's supposed to be a place where people can collaborate and create free software for BSA purposes. My first thought was an open source version of TroopMaster which tracks scout info, ranks, advancement, etc. I think that project was trying to get off the ground, but now I can't find it. I went to the news section just to see what was going on. The last (and first) post was an announcement the "The Boy Scouts have joined the Open Source Community" (posted May 9, 2008).

I don't know what I can do, but I'm going to try to see what I can contribute to their effort because free stuff is cool and useful free stuff is even cooler.