E-Democracy - GroupServer Open Source tool for E-mail Lists, Online Communities, and Web Forums

GroupServer - Open Source Release

The new technology behind our Issues Forums combines e-mail list and web forum technology using GroupServer with support from the OnlineGroups.Net team. It effectively brings e-mail and web participants together in one virtual space.

GroupServer is best social software platform we've seen to date for online communities that average citizens actually use.

Citizens choose their preferred method of participation - e-mail or web - and are part of the same inclusive discussion. This is vital to local online discourse where you need to make participation as easy and equitable as possible. Without ease of use, attracting a critical mass of sustained participation is very difficult.

Watch our informal 20 minute web movie in Flash (broadband) for a detailed user and then a short admin tour.

Features include:

E-mail discussion tool - Database-driven with full text and subject line "topic digest" options
Web forum view and posting - Converts e-mails with same subject in the popular linear format with posts sorted by time (see our Liftoff messages or posts in Brighton & Hove.)
File sharing - Upload your documents, images, and files
RSS feeds - RSS is built in, allowing participation via news readers as well as the display of forum headlines across multiple web sites
Member Directory - Flexible directory with the ability to tailor what information is presented. Posts distributed via e-mail automatically insert a link to posters member page.
Web Administration - A growing set of user-friendly features are layered on top of the more complex Zope administrative interface. This allows Forum Managers to easily accomplish many tasks while also providing technical access to site administrators.
Open Source and XML-based - GroupServer renders XML content dynamically using XSLTs, is built on Zope, written in Python and served from Linux.

We encourage you to participate in our forums to get a sense of the tool. Or if you are looking for an free and open source online communities platform for your organisation that "get's e-mail" while supporting open standards and social software trends, download and install GroupServer and join the developer community.

We are working to encourage a creation of a large GroupServer developer community. This will help ensure that enhancements for one group benefit all users - including E-Democracy.Org and any UK Local Authority using the tool. Members of the UK free and open source software community have discovered and joined the project to help test the software.

Funding Further Development

Resources from the UK Local E-democracy National Project via the Office of Deputy Prime Minister supported the GPL open source release of GroupServer. Our investment leveraged two previous years of development of this New Zealand-based tool. GroupServer is not "owned" by E-Democracy.Org or the UK government.

Any organisation interested in funding GroupServer feature enhancements with E-Democracy.Org is encouraged to contact us and join our special online group for NGO and government GroupServer users. We are aggregating demand for open source enhancements that support democratic practices, forum outreach and coordination, deliberation, and consultation. We have a draft list of advanced features that will further cement GroupServer as the best open source tool for RSS enabled and web and e-mail-friendly discussions and information exchange on the Internet.

Download

Anyone, including UK Local Authorities are free to download and install this expert code on their own servers. Local citizen and voluntary associations and local authorities may also work with E-Democracy to create Issues Forums on our installation of GroupServer.

Download the source code from the GroupServer site.

For the inside scoop see GroupServer's development pages as well as E-Democracy.Org's notes on feature requests and needs.