The RWBI prospectus is a document full of our philosophy and ideals- we decided it was time to talk about how we're implementing those ideals in "real life" and what other paths Ruby is taking that weren't directly outlined in the prospectus.

Software

Early on, Chérie and I decided that we would make every effort to use open source and free software when possible in the day to day operations and development of Ruby. The obvious benefit is the ability to put more of our funds directly into Ruby projects. All of our members can access and use open source software regardless of their financial standing, which aligns with our guiding principles of access and equity. Self help and mutual aid are also RWBI ideals: most if not all open source projects have related forums, feedback and bug reporting so that users can find their own answers to questions or help the developers to improve the product for the benefit of all users. In addition, since open source software is regularly improved by the users, it often results in better products that evolve more quickly than standard software.

We both use Mozilla's Firefox browser and I use Thunderbird for email. For the creation of our group documentation and publications we are moving to the OpenOffice.org suite of office products including Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets and Impress for multimedia presentations. FTP transfers are accomplished using FileZilla. For image editing we'll move to using The Gimp. When I develop our website, it will be built with Drupal (the Relocalization Network site is also built with Drupal, but as our site will only have to cater to us, it will be a much simpler, smaller-scale site). There are thousands of open source software projects- find the ones you can use at SourceForge.net.

Collaboration and Consistency

Nearly everything Chérie and I do for RWBI is done jointly- I'm sure she'll suggest changes to this post, just as I do with hers! Co-writing everything, from our values and ideals documents right through to our presentations and publicity documents, insures that they include both of our voices. It gives each of us the opportunity to explore ideas or aspects of a topic that the other might not have considered. Each document and idea is a compromise, taking a shape unique to Ruby. Working collaboratively on projects- whether they be writing documentation, planting a garden or lobbying the government- makes the work easier for all involved and helps each project take on the personality of the entire group. That same personality will be evident in all of our online and printable documentation, simply by using the same font styles whenever possible, the same graphic look and feel, the same type of language and most importantly, content that is always consistent with our ideals.