Summary

We want to improve the FFII's web sites. We will pay 3000 euros for initial development, with possibly a monthly sum for later support.

Description of the web sites and their problems

The FFII has a number of web sites. Most important are http://www.ffii.org/, http://press.ffii.org/ and http://action.ffii.org/. The latter is a wiki (MoinMoin) maintained collectively by FFII's activists. www.ffii.org and press.ffii.org are also wikis collectively maintained, but by fewer people.

www.ffii.org is unsatisfactory, both because of its unappealing graphical design, and because it doesn't satisfactorily lead people to the information they need. The people who maintain it are not experts in web design. Besides, it is a small web site that should be centrally maintained in order to have a unified look and feel, including its content, that should address the concerns not of the core people who maintain it, but of outsiders, such as non-core supporters, potential supporters, people seeking information about software patents and open standards, and so on. The skill of understanding those people's needs and covering them is either absent or not adequately practised in our case. Therefore, www.ffii.org needs complete overhaul, possibly choosing another CMS than Moin.

action.ffii.org is better. Activists write there primarily for them and their peers. It's decentralised, and its main problem is that it tends to become chaotic, as many people write there, some follow rules, some dislike rules, they have different habits in naming and linking, and so on. However, it is generally decent.

press.ffii.org is a small web site holding little else than press releases. For the press releases it works fairly well, but maybe not optimally. Its software patent news service has been serving people well over the years but it is really suboptimal. In addition, there is no clear place on which to write news pages other than press releases.

Some other FFII web sites, such as www.economic-majority.com, are developed and maintained autonomously by FFII workgroups on different budgets, so they are not of any concern here.

There is also a web site missing. We don't have a web site to store papers and opinions, except swpat.ffii.org, made with a custom system that does not allow easy collaborative editing.

Thus, the sites which are the subject of this tender are primarily www.ffii.org, press.ffii.org, and the missing one with papers. We think that the former two might better be joined into a single web site, and that another tool, such as Plone, may be better suited for them. For example, having automatically updated boxes with "press releases", "news", "upcoming events" and so on seems to be important. Considering the repository of papers and opinions, this presents several problems; ideally it should be able to serve its content both as html and as printable pdf, for example. But its most important problem is that people have each their own ideas and preferences on how to edit and upload such documents. The only such system we ever had is swpat.ffii.org.

Requirements

Tool. Propose any tool you like. OS is Debian. Must be skinnable with customizable user authentication (more on these below). You will have to install it on the FFII server, with the help of the administrator, and you will probably be asked to maintain it (more on this below). MoinMoin has the advantage that we already use it, but it also has problems; access control is difficult for the users, it doesn't have any workflow tools, and it is quite unstructured, without adequate aids for navigation. We also think that custom skin compatibility between versions could be better. You might also want to propose two tools (e.g. one for www+press, one for documents) if you think this would be better.

Content. The new web site or sites should replace www.ffii.org and press.ffii.org, and should thus include all content from both these sites. This content, however, should be properly restructured. In addition, wherever you feel that some additional content must be provided, you will tell us and it will be our responsibility to write it.

Redirections. No URLs should break. If the URL scheme is changed, then Apache rewrite rules or similar must be written to redirect the old URLs to the new URLs with a 301 http status code.

User authentication. User authentication must be done against the FFII PostgreSQL database. Authenticating a user is a simple matter of running a single SQL function and examining its return value.

SSL. When no-one is logged on, the site must be working either with or without SSL (by default without). User passwords must never be transmitted unencrypted, even if the user wants it (this is to protect from careless users - if a user can deliberately work around that in some complex way, there is no problem). Session cookies shouldn't go unencrypted either, because if a session is compromised the attacker could get temporary access to sensitive data.

Skin. The web site must be skinnable. You are not required to do any graphic work, but only to provide a decent simple initial skin, similar to the one we have now (possibly using a classic three-column layout), or to the one used at http://www.eupaco.org. Of course, you are welcome to be creative if you want, but we won't focus on skinning at this stage and budget; we'll allocate funds to this later if we think it's important. What is important is the easiness of implementing skins (some tools are skinnable in theory but it's difficult to write skins, hard to make skins work with new versions, etc.) Please include some information on that in your proposal.

Donations. A decent system for donating must also be designed and implemented. This can redirect to an external service. However, you must also setup the external service and deliver a functioning system. If this needs any setup of bank accounts or sending letters etc., it will be our responsibility, but you'll have to tell us what you need us to do. You should propose a decent external service (or one that doesn't suck too much). In addition, the donation interface must be localisable.

Tender procedure

We'll pay 3 thousand euro for this project. If you need to charge VAT, it will be in addition to the 3 thousand. This is not a lowest-bidder tender, so we'll judge proposals based on quality. Send your proposal and we will contact you with questions. We will consider every proposal and everyone will be contacted. You will have a chance to clarify points in your proposal.

Send your proposal to board@ffii.org, written in free style. Try to not make it more than 600 words. Presumably you have some familiarity with the FFII and its web sites, so feel free to propose what you think would be good on the long term, be it a different approach to websiting altogether.

The deadline for proposals is 30 May 2007 23:59 UTC.

Bear in mind that there may be user resistance if you ask people to change habits; this is one reason why you should be careful with proposing changes to action.ffii.org, and why we don't ask you to do it (but it can be done if you convince us that there are compelling reasons to change it).

In order to install the web site, you may get access to sensitive FFII data, so you may be asked to sign an NDA.

Timeline: Naturally, we want the web sites ready by yesterday. However, we are prepared to wait for two or three months. Include some information on time schedule in your proposal.

Payment schedule: This is not fixed, as it will depend on the proposal. If, for example, your proposal includes three distinct web sites and you deliver them one by one, you'll probably get paid as you deliver each item; but if it's a single integrated system delivered as a whole, this would be more difficult. In any case, you'll probably not get more than half the money before final delivery.

If your proposal wins, we will be publish it, so that people have the chance to do better bidding for the membership management system tender. See how this tender relates to the membership management system tender.

Questions on this tender should be addressed to board@ffii.org. Please also subscribe to the [ffii:listinfo:polis-parl polis-parl mailing list], as any minor changes or clarifications will be announced there.

Support

We have already allocated funds for further support and development. Presumably after the system is up and running, you will need to train and support users, maintain the system, and further develop it. It's possible that we will ask you to do it (e.g. for 500 euros per month, 10 hours of work per week), or we may put up a new tender for it. We think it would be too early to decide on this.