Discourse is one of the only open source products in my tech stack that is not in the Digital Public Goods registry, which connects open source software with the UN sustainable development goals. I think nomination is pretty easy and I’m happy to do it, but I think it would make sense for the Discourse team to do it because it’s a good marketing opportunity. Starts at the link below:
The registry itself is a super interesting list of projects to scroll through - seems there’s open source for every function you can imagine! It has a github activity indicator for each project, so you can see which ones are active (or completely dead).
Each project also gets a very nice page in the registry explaining how they meet the criteria for inclusion,for example ghost.
Here’s how Nextcloud and Ghost talk about the DPG on their blogs:
This is actually a very interesting initiative. Adding widely used open-source platforms like Discourse to the Digital Public Goods registry could really help improve visibility for tools that align with global development goals. The idea of having a centralized registry with activity indicators is also useful for identifying active and maintained projects.
On a related note, digital platforms and public service tools are becoming increasingly important for accessibility and governance in many regions.