THE NATURAL CAPITAL INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES THE OPEN SOURCE RELEASE OF WiserEarth.org SOFTWARE
April 15, 2008 (Sausalito, California) – The nonprofit organization the Natural Capital Institute (NCI) announces the open source release of the wiki-enabled database and community networking site WiserEarth.org. The software is open source under the GPL 3.0 license, which allows for the use, modification, or sharing of the software without restrictions. It is released under the name 'WiserPlatform', and can be downloaded at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wiserplatform.

Opening the source code to the community is a major milestone for the Natural Capital Institute. According to WiserEarth’s technical director, Arash Boostani, “By opening the platform, we’re providing a powerful tool for people to build communities around any area of interest with complex, interrelated data. We’re hopeful that these communities will benefit from the free exchange of ideas and information; just as the WiserEarth community has.”

WiserEarth.org was launched in May, 2007 as a community networking forum, containing the detailed taxonomy of the areas of focus within the realms of environmental sustainability and social justice. WiserEarth provides a community-driven platform to post resources, events, personal profiles, jobs, and to create and participate in groups. Already the site includes over 100,000 non-profit organizations and thousands of international users.
The WiserPlatform can now be used to create web sites that manage complex relationships between different entity types. It includes built-in social networking and groupware functionality, so that communities implementing the platform can define and configure their own entity types and taxonomies for categorizing data. The platform also allows users to add, edit, and search structured data using a rich-text wiki editor.

*************************
ABOUT THE NATURAL CAPITAL INSTITUTE
The Natural Capital Institute serves the people who are transforming the world. We are a team of researchers, teachers, students, activists, scholars, writers, social entrepreneurs, artists, and volunteers committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture. We do two things: we describe pathways of change in books and research reports, and we create tools for connecting the individuals, information, and organizations that create change. For more information, visit www.naturalcapital.org.
MEDIA CONTACT: Melinda Kramer, kramer@naturalcapital.org 415/331-6241