Coding for good: Highlights from the open source humanitarian movement

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HFOSS, Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software, is a movement inspired first by the December 2004 Asian tsunami, and then by other humanitarian needs in the health, civic, finance and academic sectors (especially for women and people of color).

Leslie Hawthorn, part of Red Hat's Community Action and Impact team, gives example after example of how HFOSS has improved and made possible disaster preparedness and relief programs, as well as empowered other projects:

  • OpenMRS, electronic health records. 
  • Public transportation applications. 
  • Microloans for thousands to start small businesses in their communities (especially women, worldwide). 
  • Computer Science programs, students' code used for social good. 
  • Grace Hopper Codeathon for Humanity, growing conference for women in technology.
  • Random Hacks of Kindness, helps to mitigate disasters as they occur. 

YouTube Video

Leslie Hawthorn headshot
Leslie Hawthorn has spent her career creating and cultivating open source communities. She has driven open source strategy in Fortune 10 companies, pre-IPO startups, and Foundation Boards including senior roles at Red Hat, Google, the Open Source Initiative, and Elastic. She currently leads the industry verticals community strategy team within Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office.

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