Who says developers are only in it for the money? This list of nine pieces of software can and have already had a positive impact on the world. They’re all shining examples of what can happen when software developers set their minds to solving social problems or providing a public service.
Ushahidi
Ushahidi is a free and open source platform for crowdsourced mapping. It’s often been used for monitoring elections and tracking crises. It was initially developed to map reports of violence after the Kenyan elections in late 2007, in which over 1,000 people were killed. Ushahidi became a critical source of information for Kenyan citizens as well as relief workers who needed to know where the violence was at any given moment. After the platform took off with over 45,000 Kenyan users and citizen journalists in 2008, the developers opened up the platform to be used worldwide. Part of what makes Ushahidi an attractive platform is that it can collate information from a variety of sources, including SMS, email, and Twitter. Mobile phone integration is especially critical in the Global South or in crisis zones, where consistent internet access may not be readily available. Ushahidi has been used to track anti-immigrant violence in South Africa, relief needs and damaged infrastructure after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Missouri River floods of 2011, election rigging around the world, and much more. Today the team behind Ushahidi offers the open source platform to be installed on your own LAMP server, a hosted version of Ushahidi called Crowdmap, and the information-gathering and verification platform SwiftRiver, which can be used in conjunction with Ushahidi and could be an item on this list in its own right. The team also recently made their first foray into hardware with the BRCK, a rugged mobile Internet device designed to provide Internet access in areas with damaged or underdeveloped infrastructure.
Buycott
There are plenty of straightforward reasons to avoid a particular company out of ethical concerns. Keeping track of all those reasons--not to mention any given brand’s parent and subsidiary companies--isn’t as simple. That’s where Buycott comes in. Available as Android and iOS apps, Buycott simplifies the situation by scanning a product’s barcode and alerting you if there are any conflicts with the issues you care about. The most innovative and useful feature of Buycott: It doesn’t force anyone’s politics on you as a user. Instead, users create campaigns for the issues that matter to them and other users join in on the campaigns. As a user you’re free to sign up for campaigns like Say No to Monsanto, Promote Sustainable Fishing, Boycott Israeli settlements, and Avoid Koch Industries. Because of the user-generated nature of the campaigns, two Buycott campaigns may be diametrically opposed to each other, like Support Reasonable Gun Control and Support Gun Rights and the Second Amendment. At present, the most popular campaign is Demand GMO labeling, which has just shy of 125k supporters. Another interesting feature is that Buycott doesn’t just let you avoid companies you disagree with, but also helps you seek out companies you support (hence the name “buycott”). Campaigns like B Corporations and Support the Cooperative economy list companies that are considered socially responsible and worth supporting.
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