Spirit of America is funding the development of a blogging tool:
We are funding the development of an Arabic blogging (Web logging) tool and, with donor support, we will host the blogs at no cost to the bloggers. This will allow blogs to be created easily. It will give voice to those working for freedom and democracy in the Arab world. And it will enable them to more easily connect with and share ideas with their peers.
The project has earmarked $32,000, which is apparently being paid to iUpload. Why?! This is exactly what open source is designed for. That kind of money could run blogs for hundreds of thousands of users for years. Also, the tool would be "owned" by everyone, could be re-used, modified, etc.
So here's the deal. Drupal supports Arabic script out of the box. We can host blogs for thousands of Arabic bloggers today. Bryght will help with the hosting and configuration, and support efforts to add any Arabic-specific modifications (note: there is an Arabic translation of the interface already). I'm sure that CivicSpace Labs would help out with such a worthwhile project as well.
What do you say, Spirit of America? Free blogs today, and the legacy of an open source tool for the future.
Update: Zack Rosen did a great job articulating the benefits of open source:
Investments in technology for public projects should be thought of as investments in infrastructure. As long as bits that travel across routers and open-source code is free we have the ability and in my opinion the obligation to make sure we milk these technologies and our investments in them for all they are worth. Everything built on the public sectors behalf should be re-usable and built as cheaply and efficiently as possible. This investment in iUpload and their service is not an investment in re-usable infrastructure; it is an investment in iUploads business. That is good for iUpload instead of the Iraqis.