Sahana; While Software Saves Lives, Licenses Can Deter

Ross Gardler, who I knew from his stay in Trinidad and Tobago and his work related to Burrokeet, emailed the CIVIC email list about a project named Sahana.

Sahana is saving lives right now. ARC was too late to be of effect in this disaster, but Sahana is the next logical step and it is being DONE. While I did try to look over the Sahana project on Sourceforge, I can't honestly say that I know how people can help, or what actually needs to be done. You see, the requirements are coming to the team in real time, and it's happening so fast that all I can do is hang out on the email list and see if I can help somehow. At first I was discouraged by this, but there is something I can do - and that's exactly what I am doing. Sharing this information as best I can.

If anyone has Java or PHP skills, now would be a good time to help the Sahana project on Sourceforge. Look over the code, the CVS, and I would say let the core team drive functionality while anyone new helping focuses on making what they have better.

Some companies have helped considerably, as Sanjiva points to. Some excerpts:

December 31, 2004

...We now have IBM, Microsoft and Cisco at least offering and sending their crisis management teams here. Thank you. However; rant: It *really* pisses me off that all of these guys were willing to only sell this shit for tons of $$ earlier, but are now willing to come and give the stuff away free and send a lot of people to set it up and operate it etc. etc.. Oh well. I guess it takes several thousand dead bodies (more than 25 in our case) to counter-balance a couple of million dollars profit...

January 7th:

The IBM Crisis Response Team, a group of folks that goes to crisis situations to help with whatever stuff is here. They saw this stuff and they are in love with it .. in 70+ crisis situations they've responded to globally (including 9/11 BTW) they have not seen something like this. They are now helping push it in Sri Lanka (and elsewhere). Even the UNDAC (UN Disaster Assistance Coordination) guys like it .. and couple of those guys said they'll call us next time they run into some disaster. (Must be a damned depressing job to go from one disaster another disaster .. but I guess they live and work in nice comfortable AC'ed rooms and are far dispatched from the realities of the disasters they go to.

This part from January 11, 2005 is really sort of irritating - emphasis mine:

...Well looks like some folks didn't like that. Because the software itself is free and because the infrastructure it depends on is free that doesn't leave much room for people to make money I guess. Sahana is written in PHP and Java and runs on Linux using the Apache Web server (of course) and MySQL as the database. We use the Apache Tomcat servlet container to host the Java stuff.

The commercial software offerers are spreading major FUD against Sahana now. The shocking thing is that its not Microsoft, the usual culprit of FUD against open source! Instead its the local agent of a major brand-name software company from the US .. and no its not IBM :). Its probably the local agent being up to their usual bull shit but its pretty pathetic.

IBM donated us 15 notebooks to help with the development of Sahana and to give to folks to gather the data. When we booted them we found that they had, um, PC-DOS!! Ouch. Apparently they tried to get MSFT to donate 15 XP licenses for it and have not been successful so far .. the local MSFT guys are not happy that those machines are going to be used to further an open source system I guess? Who knows. We will run Linux on the development servers but unfortunately "normal" people (I should say Windows infected people :-)) cannot be given a Linux box yet .. even though all they'd need to use is Firefox. Hopefully the OS issue will get sorted out today; they've been sitting in a pile wasting time since Friday.

IBM is also donating two X-Series 4-processor servers for the production deployment. (Its currently on an X-Series box that they loaned us.) IBM is also donating 350 notebooks to Sri Lanka with digital cameras and the finger print device .. and they're going to be equipped with Sahana and sent around for data capture. IBM folks here are putting together a training program and preparing a t-shirt etc.. IBM proud to be an IBMer right now; they're doing the right thing (ok at least from my point of view ;-)). And no one has even asked me to run the stuff using WebSphere and DB2 ;-)...

What the? They are waiting on software licenses from Microsoft? They have a Microsoft crisis team there and NO licensing ability?

Reality Relief In A Nearby Camp really brings this home.

So what does this all mean? Well, for one, there's now an Open Source system available for the affected areas at present, and NGOs and GOs can use the system - it's WORKING, right NOW - and it also means that people who are on the ground and can collaborate based the local needs they may have - creating a robust system in real time. Why are you still reading this?

For the rest of us - the first thing we should do is not get in the way. The next thing we should do is try to help in any way that we can - and maybe that means getting the word out.