Technology for Action

As a fluid place of authorship and cooperation, the Internet has incredible potential for generating collective action. With the right tools, it lowers the obstacles to communication, information sharing, and group decision-making.

Controlled technologies limit the ability of individuals and groups to generate motion and reach goals. The open source software movement is not just a story of technology made free to grow, it's an example of how collaboration can yield powerful results. OpenPlans pushes open source ideals beyond software.

OpenPlans is a toolset for community organizing. OpenPlans.org runs on a stack of software called OpenCore. The OpenCore package includes tools already available (ex. WordPress for blogging) and neat software that we’re building. All of our work is open source, so we're excited about your use, help, repurposing, and feedback. Some projects of note:

• Deliverance is our skinning layer for normal people.  Instead of complex CMS-specific tools, or creating a new template for every piece of software you use, Deliverance allows you to theme any software using a simple example page.  By uncoupling content from its delivery method, Deliverance helps bridge the aesthetic differences that make it hard to integrate local and remote services while freeing you to use the best tool for each part of the website.
• Listen is our flexible mailing list manager. Listen has easy list setup, forum-like posting, viewing of archives, and a choice of list types. Features include: archive url in message, address masking, and searchability.  Late at night, Listen dreams of becoming the most versatile and intuitive mailing list program available, with features like: the ability to subscribe to a single thread on a list, highly customizable privacy settings, a great interface, and the ability to moderate via email (in addition to browser).
• TaskTracker is our lightweight life manager. Project management tools are too heavy and complicated. They should be limber and simple, and they should make collaboration easy.  Whether you're rolling out a new website or saving the Northern Hairy-Nosed wombat, TaskTracker can help your team keep track of project tasks, responsibilities, and status markers. Some people like to get a good, firm hold on their work. With TaskTracker you can do (whiz-bang!) drag-and-drop reordering, set up a bunch of tasks for others to claim, or 'grab' an available task for yourself. Future plans include wiki integration, a range of reminder methods, and import/export to your favorite places (iCal, HTML, paper, etc.).
  
• Transcluder brings outside content into a document using markup as a guide. Taken from the wiki term, Transcluder allows for a link leading to an HTML page – for example – to be replaced with the content of that page, with relative links updated. A bit like server side includes, except it understands HTML and HTTP. Transcluder is not a robot in disguise.
  
• ReMember simplifies Plone custom member management. Wrapping objects is a hassle. Building on the Membrane plug-in set, ReMember has moved member management beyond CMFMember, and it works with Plone 2.5 and up.
  
• Wicked (“wiki distilled”) is a simple syntax for making links. Wicked links are easy to make: surround the link with double parentheses, and each lonely link appears as an add link+ for new content. Wicked has a simple reference system for relating interlinked content and wiki linking for multiple content types. The rest of our wiki is HTML, because We Love The Web. Whit Morriss wrote Wicked.
  
• Flunc is a tool for over-the-web functional testing. With Flunc, developers can use browser simulation to test regardless of context. Flunc plays well with tests, suites, and configurations, and it handles cleanup and host redirection.
  
• Externalator helps you handle bundles without dropping anything important. Say a bundle of software hiding out in a repository includes external dependencies. Externalator does for bundles what svn does for repository management: when you checkout an svn bundle, you also get all the externals the bundle needs to run. Brilliant.
• OHM is a Python library for interchanging objects and REST-style HTTP APIs. If an object resides at some base url, you can expose every attribute as an independent (and independently settable) resource under the "container" url.
  
• WPHP lets you run PHP applications just like they are Python applications, using the Python standard web application interface, WSGI.
  
• Paste gets web applications to play well together. CherryPy, TurboGears, all kinds of WSGI Middleware, and more. It can help you provide custom templates and commands for your framework and streamline your automated testing. If you're an administrator, paste simplifies adding and configuring multiple applications and simplify maintenance. Ah, frictionless web development.
  
• WSGIFilter makes WSGI output easier. By leaving the content as Python objects, WSGIFilter avoids unnecessary encoding and decoding. It is a result of thinking about server-side processing of microformats without much overhead.