HFOSS Projects

Revision as of 15:45, 19 June 2017

This page contains lists of HFOSS and FOSS applications that could possibly serve as student projects. The projects are at various levels of maturity and have a range of complexity. This list could serve as an initial starting point in identifying possible HFOSS and FOSS communities with which to work. (For a shorter, more curated list of HFOSS projects that have volunteered to participate in foss2serve activities, see HFOSS Communities.)

In addition to applications lists, there are sections containing resources that will help you find other projects and resources for FOSS developers to help you get started. There are also external links to other helpful FOSS related resources.

HFOSS Projects by Application Area

This is a list of known HFOSS projects that are known to be active. The last comprehensive update of the table was April 2016.

HFOSS Groups by Application Area

HFOSS groups are collections of projects that are being developed by the groups. You may find individual projects within these groups.

Accessibility

• GNOME - Accessibility project Develops and fosters compelling free open source accessibility solutions for graphical user interfaces. Through a worldwide community of developers and users, we continue to empower everyone, regardless of physical or mental abilities. (TOS recommended)

• The Global Ability Initiative (Last active in 2012) is a venture dedicated to the development of gratis, open source software for the disabled. We provide assistive software for a wide variety of people, suffering for example from Aphasia, MS, ALS, Cerebral Palsy and other disabilities as well.

• Project Possibility (GitHub organization) - Nonprofit, community service project committed to creating groundbreaking software for the disabled community--for free. Our goal is to inspire software engineers to make a difference by inventing software that unlocks new areas of life for disabled persons, giving them access to experiences previously impossible to achieve. The software that is created through this project is open source: it cannot be sold for profit, and is freely available for use, distribution, and modification.

Education

• Apereo (GitHub organization) is a non-profit organization that promotes open source projects for higher education. Apereo was created from a merger of the Sakai Foundation and jasig. Projects include Sakai and others.

• Kuali.org Growing community of universities, colleges, businesses, and other organizations that have partnered to build and sustain open-source administrative software for higher education, by higher education. Kuali software is designed to meet the needs of all sizes of institutions, from land-grant reasearch universities to community colleges. The members of the Kuali Community share a common vision of open, modular, and distributed systems for their software requirements. Kuali software is released under the Educational Community License.

• One laptop per child (OLPC) - Mission Statement: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

• OpenOffice.org Education project (no longer active)

• Shared Learning Collaborative "The SLC is working to make personalized learning a reality for every U.S. student by improving the usefulness, variety and affordability of education technology."

• Runestone Interactive Provides open source tools for creating interactive textbooks. Also hosts free textbooks built with the tools

• Blockly A visual program editor primarily used to teach programming concepts in K-12 environments.

Healthcare

• LibreHealth "LibreHealth is an umbrella organization where multiple health information technology projects collaborate"

• OpenEHR (GitHub organization) An international not-for-profit Foundation.

• Multi-Level Healthcare Information Modeling (GitHub organization) Evolved out of OpenEHR, this is a group of frameworks, applications and tools used in developing health care applications and the governance of knowledge artifacts using multi-level information models vs. data model approaches. Based on more than 20 years of research and development projects on three continents. These specifications came together in the early 2000's under the auspices of the openEHR Foundation.

• Open Source Health Information Platform (OSHIP) (no longer active) Implementation of Multi-Level Healthcare Information Modeling. An application development platform (most mature version is Python) based on MLHIM.

• Trusted Opensource Records for Care and Health (TORCH) (no longer active) Project under Multi-Level Healthcare Information Modeling, Trusted Open Source Records for Care and Health - TORCH is a web enabled electronic health record (EHR) application. TORCH is usable in single practitioner offices and scalable up to multi-site practices.

• OpenHealth (no longer active) Platform that brings together interoperable public health applications targeting district, national and global health management. The Public Health Information Toolkit (PHIT) is meant to be a self-contained USB pendrive that makes public health tools and frameworks available “out of the box”, including content developed by leading public health organizations and networked communities of practice. The starter suite of tools brings together OpenMRS, iHRIS, DHIS2 and OpenHealthMapper (OHM)

• DIHS2 (GitHub organization) Project under Open Health, DHIS2 is a tool for collection, validation, analysis, and presentation of aggregate statistical data, tailored (but not limited) to integrated health information management activities. It is a generic tool rather than a pre-configured database application, with an open meta-data model and a flexible user interface that allows the user to design the contents of a specific information system without the need for programming. DHIS 2 and upwards is a modular web-based software package built with free and open source Java frameworks.

• Tolven Health Record Tolven is focused on delivering the following products: An electronic Personal Health Record (ePHR) to enable consumers to record and selectively share healthcare information about themselves and their loved ones. An electronic Clinician Health Record (eCHR) to enable healthcare providers to securely access healthcare information collated from any number of trusted sources. A Healthcare Informatics Platform to enable all healthcare data to be stored and accessed via the ePHR and eCHR solutions. The platform is based on industry-standard technologies and data models. A Health Analytics solution that enables all data stored in the Tolven Platformto be extracted or analyzed for statistical purposes.

• VistA WorldVistA EHR is an open source electronic health record (EHR) based on the highly acclaimed VistA system of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The foundation for WorldVistA EHR was developed as part of the VistA-Office project, a collaborative effort funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The overall goal of the VistA-Office EHR (VOE) project was to encourage the broader adoption and effective use of EHRs among physicians by making a robust, flexible EHR solution alternative available. After completion of the VOE project in March 2007, WorldVistA made additional enhancements and submitted WorldVistA EHR for certification by theCertification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology(CCHITSM). WorldVistA EHR, Verison VOE/1.0 achieved full CCHITSM EHR.

• Global Health Observatory The Global Health Observatory project aims to make statistical data that has been collected and processed by the World Health Organization available to the general public. This is the GHO application set intended for installation on the WHO production tomcat hosting servers.

• iHRIS (Contributing) The Capacity Project has developed three free and Open Source core software solutions, each addressing a specific human resources for health (HRH) leadership issue.

• Open Healthcare Framework Project (no longer active) The Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) is a project within Eclipse formed for the purpose of expediting healthcare informatics technology. The project is composed of extensible frameworks and tools which emphasize the use of existing and emerging standards in order to encourage interoperable open source infrastructure, thereby lowering integration barriers. We currently provide tools and Frameworks for HL7, IHE, Terminology, Devices, and Public Healthcare Maintenance.

• OpenAPS "The Open Artificial Pancreas System project (#OpenAPS) is an open and transparent effort to make safe and effective basic Artificial Pancreas System (APS) technology widely available to more quickly improve and save as many lives as possible and reduce the burden of Type 1 diabetes."

• pyGeno "pyGeno is (to our knowledge) the only tool available that will gladly build your specific genomes for you."

• cBioPortal "The cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics provides visualization, analysis, and download of large-scale cancer genomics data sets."

• cognoma "Putting machine learning in the hands of cancer biologists.", "Project Cognoma is an open source project to create a webapp for analyzing cancer data."

Relief

• allReady "brings together community members, volunteers, humanitarian and community organizations to make our communities more resilient to the effects of disasters by making preparedness activities more visible and effective to the communities they serve and the volunteers who support them."

• Sahana "Making high quality information management systems for emergency preparedness, response, recovery and resilience-building accessible to all."

Microfinance

• Sangam Pro (micro finance) The Ecumenical Sangam's Microfinance (mF) scheme started in July 2008 and since then the Sangam has provided “refundable financial aid” to its former students of the Sangam’s technical and sewing classes. This financial aid is meant to be used for the start-up of small businesses such as tailoring shops and repair businesses. The initial funds to start this Microfinance scheme have been made available through the Sangam's German Partner DIZ who in turn obtained a grant from the Hessian State Ministry of Economic Affairs. Site that might be of interest: www.sksfoundation.org/ The SKS Ultra Poor Program works to address the challenges of extreme poverty through three linked interventions: economic, social and health, and aims to work with members so that they have the capacity to participate in mainstream microfinance after a period of 18 months. After the program is over, most members will choose to take a microfinance loan to grow their existing business or diversify income sources by starting new businesses.

Privacy and Security

• Guardian Project creates easy-to-use apps, mobile OS security enhancements, and customized mobile devices for people around the world to help them communicate more freely, and protect themselves from intrusion and monitoring.

• The FreeNet Project Free software which lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" (web sites accessible only through Freenet) and chat on forums, without fear of censorship. Freenet is decentralised to make it less vulnerable to attack, and if used in "darknet" mode, where users only connect to their friends, is very difficult to detect.

• Tor Free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Tor for a wide variety of reasons: journalists and bloggers, human rights workers, law enforcement officers, soldiers, corporations, citizens of repressive regimes, and just ordinary citizens.

• Open Technology Institute promotes "universal access to communications technologies that are both open and secure, using a multidisciplinary approach that brings together advocates, researchers, organizers, and innovators." OTI does policy work, but also has some open source projects including Commotion Wireless

ICT for Development and Non-Profits

This section lists FOSS projects that are more general in nature, including ones that address ICT infrastructure areas such as communication, but that either have a clear humanitarian goal or have come to have some clear humanitarian application.

MySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives.

The Magilas Project for the Philippines aims to cover every area of its 7,107 islands and 42,000 barangays - and the 34,580-feet-deep Philippine Trench. The word "magilas" means, among many other good things, "agile, clever, dynamic, quick-witted, sharp, smart, spirited, vigorous, and winged." The goal is to make breakthroughs by keeping things simple and "fitly joined together." We will use free or user-friendly resources. We will "baranganize" (relate to, apply to barangays) as many things as we effectively can. HE: This project aims to add technology to all parts of Philippine society, including health.

The Arches Project "is an open-source, geospatially-enabled software platform for cultural heritage inventory and management, developed jointly by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund."

Communications

CiviCRM Customer Relationship Management (CRM) specifically geared to the needs of non-profit organizations. "A key measure of our success will always be the social good that CiviCRM generates"

Awaaz.De Awaaz.De (“Give your voice”) is a software platform enabling organizations to engage with poor, remote, and marginal communities by providing on-demand, many-to-many information access through mobile phones. People access Awaaz.De applications by dialing regular phone numbers to create, browse,and share voice content through automated voice interfaces. Voice makes it easy to provide services in local languages, overcomes literacy constraints, and offers a low barrier to content creation: one only needs to know how to speak into a phone.

Freedom Fone Freedom Fone addresses the need for simple, affordable, uncensored communication technology. It allows for frequently-updated, short segment audio programming. It removes the technical challenge of hosting and setting up the back-end, allowing users to concentrate on content.

FrontlineSMS Award-winning free, open source software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with groups of people through mobile phones. What is communicated is up to the user, making FrontlineSMS useful in many different ways.

Managing News Managing News originated as a news aggregation and republishing platform heavily integrated with RSS/Atom. Users can track a diverse set of RSS/Atom feeds, visualize them, and republish selected reports on a platform that allows for mapping and pluggable visualizations. Managing News has subsequently added SMS functionality to the system. The system is based on Drupal, and integrates several open source projects including OpenLayers, SimplePie, and many Drupal plug-ins.

RapidSMS Free and open-source framework for dynamic data collection, logistics coordination and communication, leveraging basic short message service (SMS) mobile phone technology.

GeoChat Geochat emerged from a simple concept - can I send an SMS message and see it on a map? From there the concept has evolved, and geochat has become a project to build a collaboration platform for the lowest common denominator communication tools, considering as highest priorities the needs of workers of humantiarian aid, international health and disaster response. The main drivers for the project are the feedback of the InSTEDD programs in South East Asia, exercises such as GoldenShadow?, and a growing community of humanitarian and health workers who spend their days in technologically austere environments.

Ushahidi Ushahidi is a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and visualize and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools.

Data Collection and Management

Martus Allows users to create a secure database that can be backed up remotely. Used world-wide by organizations to protect information on human rights abuses.

OpenXData is a community-developed, open-source, enterprise end-to-end software solution for handling virtually any type of forms based data collection and management using mobile devices and web forms (online or offline).Can us both high- and low-end mobile devices and mobile phones as well as in a regular web-browser to show and capture forms based data.

OpenROSA A consortium formed to create open source, standards-based tools for mobile data collection, aggregation, analysis, and reporting. By developing open source solutions and conforming to standards based on the XForms specification, our different projects can easily share code, data, ideas and infrastructure.

Open Data Kit A suite of tools to help organizations collect, aggregate and visualize their data. Our goals are to make open-source and standards-based tools which are easy to try, easy to use, easy to modify and easy to scale. To this end, we are proud members of the OpenMobile Consortium, the OpenRosa Consortium, and active participants in the JavaRosa project.

INSTEDD - Mesh4X A data mesh which allows information to be synchronized in a peer-to-peer way, allowing offline work, and synchronizing with whoever is available, not just a central database or a service on the internet. This makes it a perfect fit for situation where there is little/no connectivity or where the synchronization has to happen between different applications and services.

OpenStreetMap "OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world." While not strictly HFOSS, OpenStreetMap provides mapping for HFOSS projects such as Ushahidi.

Humanitarian Open Street Map "Free, up-to-date maps are a critical resource when relief organizations are responding to disasters or political crises. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) creates and provides those maps."

HFOSS Applications Created by Students

Ronald McDonald House project

Finding HFOSS

This section identifies sites that are useful in locating HFOSS projects, and groups connected to HFOSS efforts.

Black Duck Open Hub - The Black Duck Open Hub (formerly Ohloh.net) is an online community and public directory of free and open source software (FOSS), offering analytics and search services for discovering, evaluating, tracking, and comparing open source code and projects. Open Hub Code Search is free code search engine indexing over 21,000,000,000 lines of open source code from projects on the Black Duck Open Hub.

Beaversource - A student-oriented FOSS hosting/social networking site located at Oregon State University

PhoenixForge A space for University of Chicago community members to host and organize open source software projects

The Global Health Information Network Site serves as an interactive online forum where professionals involved in procurement and HIS management can exchange views and information. The “Tools” tab lists commonly used tools, some of which are FOSS.

Social Source Commons A “knowledge commons” that provides users with: a directory of software applications; links to relevant documentation, localization tools, services, user reviews; and a place to request tools/features.

Free Software Conservancy Organization composed of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects. As a fiscal sponsor for FOSS projects, the Conservancy provides member projects with free financial and administrative services, but does not involve itself with technological and artistic decisions. Check out “Members” tab.

Idealist Project of Action Without Borders, a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 with offices in the United States and Argentina. Idealist is an interactive site where people and organizations can exchange resources and ideas, locate opportunities and supporters, and take steps toward building a world where all people can lead free and dignified lives.

Code for America "We're on a mission to make government work in the digital age." Applies technology to improve government including via HFOSS projects.

Hackontest List of FOSS projects that were worked on during a contest held during the 2008 Logo OpenExpo Swiss Open Source Software Conference & Exposition.

OWASP The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software.

Random Hacks of Kindness "Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges."

Center for OSS investigation

OS for america reportcard

MobileActive's mDirectory Searchable directory of mobile HFOSS projects.

Humanitarian-ICT Project (Appears to be inactive - 2/2014)

24 Hours of Good

InSTEDD "At InSTEDD we design and use open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations."

PeaceTech Lab "We work at the intersection of TECHNOLOGY, MEDIA, and DATA to help reduce violent conflict around the world."

Fast Forward "We look for product­-driven nonprofits that leverage open source software, always connected mobile devices, open APIs, and inexpensive variable cost web infrastructure to solve education, environmental, health, and human rights issues. Fast Forward then provides financial and human capital to help scale these technology solutions and maximize impact." Has a directory of tech non-profits.

Forges

Many HFOSS projects are hosted by the general FOSS hosting sites which are commonly known as "forges". The larger forges are useful places to search for HFOSS projects.

License analysis tools

FOSSology Analyze all of the source code for a given project and intelligently report all of the licenses being used, based on the license declarations and tell-tale phrases that identify software licensing.

OSS Discovery finds the open source software embedded in applications and installed on computers. OSS Discovery helps enterprises better manage open source usage and remain compliant with internal policies, regulations, and software license terms.

Ninka is a lightweight license identification tool for source code. It is sentence-based, and provides a simple way to identify open source licenses in a source code file. It is capable of identifying several dozen different licenses (and their variations).

External Links

List of free and open source software packages

List of free software project directories

List of FSF approved software licenses

Getting Started

These sites try to help people get started as open source contributors. The focus is open source, not just humanitarian open source, but some of the material and suggestions apply generally.

Open Hatch provides instructional materials and a collection of defects marked as "easy" for new contributors. Open Hatch also runs events to help people get started in FOSS

Up for Grabs provides lists of GitHub defects with an "up for grabs" or "Easy" tag

Your First Pull Request provides pointers to easy defects and some information about how to get started