[Ldsoss] Let me formally introduce myself...

[Tom Welch]

My name is Tom Welch.  I was recently recruited by the  Church to define 
an "open source" strategy for the Church.  What does this mean?  Well, 
for years the Church has been a heavy user of open source technology.  
Many of the back-end systems are all based upon open source software.  
In fact, the Church has contributed to certain open source projects with 
improvements that it has made.  Because of sensitivity issues, the 
Church has asked the individual developers to submit changes upstream in 
the developers name instead of the Church's name.  My role, however, is 
not to get the Church to use more open source software but is to figure 
out how we can leverage the OSS community to help build applications 
that the Church does not have the resources to do.

*A little bit about me:*

I am the former chief technology officer of Linspire, Inc 
<http://www.linspire.com>. (formally known as Lindows).  I resigned my 
post at Linspire to work on this project as I can see the huge benefit 
that enlisting the LDS development community can provide to the Church 
and to Church members.  I was with Linspire from the very beginning and 
have watched that company grow and become a success and am still 
involved with the leadership board of Freespire.org 
<http://www.freespire.org> (a completely free version of Linspire that 
will be available this summer).  I am also the author of the original 
scriptures reader that ran on the Palm and CE devices (EZ Reader).  I 
also wrote the original Franklin Day Planner software (Ascend) that was 
sold by Franklin Covey for years.  I've been around the "block" for many 
years and have seen the rise and success of open source software and I 
am very enthusiastic to be a part of it.

As you think of the Church and the work that they do from a technology 
front, most of the work is done to benefit the Church as a whole.  By 
this I mean that the Church spends almost all of their technology 
resources in building programs that run the Church (membership records, 
financial, assets, missionary, family history, temple, etc).  Very 
little "technology" money is spent benefiting individual members.  That 
is why there are no "Duty to God" tracking software, scouting software, 
family preparedness software, ward mission software, etc.  There are a 
lot of members that have written programs to help them in their Church 
callings but the Church has never really looked at or authorized any of 
these for use by the Church membership as a whole.

My job is to try and change all of this by enlisting the LDS development 
community.  So my first job is to try and build an infrastructure to 
allow us all to communicate and collaborate on projects.  This mailing 
list (and the ldssoss.org website) is a good starting point but my 
vision is to take it so much further.  In the coming weeks I will share 
much more of our plans.  Please be patient because I have a lot to do to 
work within the parameters at the Church.

*One point of caution, however:*

One of the biggest concerns the Church has with endorsing or sponsoring 
a LDS Developers site is that the content on the site could get out of 
control.  Flame wars, rude behavior, religious debate, or other 
non-Christlike behavior will not be tolerated by the Church and will get 
any such endorsed site "unendorsed".  So it is up to us to show everyone 
and prove that we can work as a community to build great software that 
will benefit users and do all of this in a cooperative and Christlike 
way.  WE need to self moderate.

Please feel free to contact me individually or through this list with 
ideas, questions, concerns, etc.  I'd love to hear all of your thoughts.

Tom
-- 
Tom Welch
welchtc at ldschurch.org
(801) 240-1609
(858) 829-4614 - Cell

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