computer science as a community service

Question

I came across Ushahidi today and that got me thinking about various community service software projects. What other community service software projects are there, whether they be web-based (as Ushahidi is) or not?

Note, I'm not talking about open source by itself, per se—although I presume most community service software will be opensource, I'm really aiming for more "help the disadvantaged of the world" type projects.

Anyone?

List

• Ushahidi (PHP, MySQL)
• One Laptop Per Child (software side of things) (Python and more)
• Sahana (PHP, MySQL)

Answer 1

The FSF gives an Award for Projects of Social Benefit. Not all of the projects are necessarily software projects, but some are. They've awarded Wikipedia, Sahana, Groklaw, Creative Commons, and Internet Archive.

Probably Sahana is the closest so far to what you're looking for. It's a system to coordinate disaster relief. It was originally developed for the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami.