FLOSS-Exchange

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Welcome to the FLOSS-Exchange, a wiki page for non-profit organizations to share experiences with free/libre and open source software (FLOSS).

This page should also be used to mention closed-source solutions in use, to understand the magnitude of the problem and consider how to improve the situation.

To share your experiences, add a new section about your organization, if missing.

Please also help on this epic summary table:

See also:

The Matrix[edit]

Legend:

1: adopted

0.5: still adopted, somehow discontinuing

0: abandoned

When in doubt, answer regarding your organization in general, from your perspective.

Last updated 2023-05-21 2023-08-19 2023-06-06 2022-11-28 2023-01-09 2023-05-19 2023-05-19 2023-05-20 2023-05-20
# FLOSS / Proprietary WMF Wikimedia Nederland Wikimedia Australia Wikimedia DC Wikimedia Finland Wikimédia France Wikimedia Italia Wikimedia Polska Wikimedia Sverige Wikimedia CH Wikimedia Österreich WMLGBT+ Wikimedia DE Wikimedia PT Internet Archive Wikimedia NYC
1Password 2 P 1 1
Adium 1 F 1
Amazon AWS 2 P 1 0 1
Android

working phones

1 F 1
Ansible 2 F 1 1 1
Apache Directory Studio 1 F 1 1
Apache HTTPd 2 F 1 1
Apache Kafka 1 F 1
Apache Solr 1 F 1
Apollo 1 P 1
Arch Linux 1 F 1
Asana 2 P 1 1 1
Atom 1 F 1
Authy 1 P 1
BigBlueButton 3 F 0 1 1 1
BlueJeans 1 P 1
Bugzilla

(dead)

1 F 1 0
Brevo (Sendinblue) 1 P 1
Collabora 1 F 1
ChatGPT 1 P 1 1
CheckFox 1 F 1
ChromeOS 1 P 1
Chromium browser 1 F 1 1 1
Ciel 1 P 1
Cisco IOS 1 P 1
CiviCRM 5 F 1 1 0 1 0 1
Colloquy 1 F 1
Courier MTA 1 F 0 1
Concur 1 P 1 1
DeployStudio 1 F 1
Dia 1 F 1
Discord 2 P 1 1 1
Drupal 2 F 1 0 1
ElasticSearch 2 F 1 1
ELBA 2 P 1 1
Ethercalc 1 F 1
Etherpad 8 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Figma 1 P 1
FileCoin

(also for data replication)

1 F 1
FinTrack 1 P
Firefox 7 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Framacalc 1 F 1 0
Framadate 2 F 1 1
Framapad 1 F 1
freenode 3 F 1 1 1
Gentoo Linux 1 F 1
Fortnox 1 P 1
git 4 F 1 1 1 1 1
GitHub 6 P 1 1 1 1 1 1
GitLab (Wikimedia) 5 F 1 1 1 1 1 1
GIMP 6 F 1 1 1 1 1 1
GNU Cash 2 F 1 1
Google Apps 3 F 1 1 1 0 1
Google Analytics 1 P 0 1
Google Authenticator 1 P 1
Google Calendar 5 P 1 1 1 0 1 1
Google Chrome 3 P 1 1 1
Google Docs/Sheets 12 P 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
Google Drive 5 P 1 1 1 0 1 1
Google Forms 4.5 P 0.5 1 0 1 1 0 1
Google Hangouts

(DIED)

5 P 1 1 1 1 1 0
Google Meet 4 P 1 1 1 1 1
Google Slides 2 P 1 1 1 0
GPG Tools 1 F 1
Grafana 2 F 1 1
Hackpad 1 P 1
Helios Voting 1 F 1
Holvi 1 P 1
irccloud 1 P 1
InDesign Adobe 2 P 1 1
Inkscape 6 F 1 1 1 1 1 1
Keypassxc 1 F 1
Jitsi Meeting 6 F 1 1 1 1 1 1
JunOS 1 P 1
LDAP 1 F 1
LibreOffice 5 F 1 1 1 1 0 1
LimeChat 1 F 1
LimeSurvey 4 F 1 1 1 1
Linux Mint laptop 1 F 1
Linux servers 7 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Loomio 1 F 1 1
macOS 3 P 1 0 1 0 1
Madar EPR 1 F 1
MailChimp 2 P 1 0 1
Mailman 6 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
MariaDB/MySQL 8 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Mastodon 7 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Matomo/Piwik 4 F 1 1 1 1
Matrix 2 F 1 1
Maxmind 1 P 1
MediaWiki 14 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Mindflash 1 P 1
Miro 1 P 1
MyNewsDesk 1 P 1
Mumble 1 F 1
Munki 1 F 1
Mural 1 P 0.5
Namely 1 P 1
nextCloud/ownCloud 4 F 1 1 1 1
nginx 1 F 1 1
Nmap 1 F 1 1
Office (Microsoft) 1 P 1 1
OpenOffice 3 F 1 1 0 1
OpenSondage 1 F 1
OTRS/ZNUNY 4 F 1 1 1 1 1
Phabricator 8 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Python 3 F 1 1 1
PHP 5 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
phpMyAdmin 2 F 1 1
Photoshop (Adobe) 1 P 1 1
Postfix 3 F 1 1 1 1
PostgreSQL 1 F 1
Puppet 2 F 1 1
Qualtrics 3 P 1 1 1
QuickBooks 1 P 1
Redis 1 F 1 1
RoundCube 4 F 1 1 1 1 1
Rust 1 F 1
RVD - Italia non profit 1 P 1
Smartlist 1 F 1
Skype 1 P 0 0 0 1 0
Sharepoint (Microsoft) 1 P 1
SugarCRM 1 F 1
Sympa 1 F 1
SurveyMonkey 1 P 1
Telegram 5 F clients

P server

1 1 1 1 1 1
Tensorflow 1 F 1
Todoist 1 P 1
Trello 2 P 0 1 0 0
Thunderbird 5 F 1 1 1 1 1 1
Tine 2.0 2 F 1 1
Twitter 4 P 1 1 1 1 1
Ubuntu laptops 5 F 1 1 1 1 1
Ubuntu servers 1 F 1 1
VirtualBox 1 F 1 1
Wikimedia Cloud / Toolforge 8 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Windows laptops 6 P 1 1 1 1 1 1
Wireshark 2 F 1 1
WordPress 11 F 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
XChat 1 F 1
Xero 1 P 1
Yhdistysavain 1 P 1
Zabbix 3 F 1 1 1
Zendesk 1 P 1 0
Zoom 7 P 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Zulip 2 F 1 1
Zynatic 1 P 1

Wikimedia Foundation[edit]

About
501(c)(3) non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and other free knowledge communities.
Homepage
http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/
FLOSS Tools we use
  • MediaWiki - the open source wiki software which runs all Wikimedia projects. We also use it internally for the office staff, and for coordination with chapter organizations in multiple countries.
    • MediaWiki runs on standard open source server software: Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.
    • See also: the more detailed mw:Upstream projects listing
  • CiviCRM - constituent relationship management. We're consolidating all our fundraising tracking using this database.
  • LibreOffice - word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Has an OK drawing component as well.
  • Debian - a Linux based operating system we use on servers
  • Ubuntu - a Linux-based operating system we use on servers and some office client machines.
  • Mailman - a mailing list manager. We use it to administer hundreds of mailing lists.
  • Firefox - arguably the world's greatest web browser :-)
  • Thunderbird - open source email client
  • Hexchat and Libera.Chat - Hexchat (X-Chat on some GNU/Linux distributions) is an open source IRC client. Libera.Chat is a non-profit IRC network, and many open source projects and social organizations can already be found there.
  • GIMP, Inkscape, and Dia - bitmap graphics editor, vector graphics editor, and business chart editor. Dia is not very feature-rich so not really recommended for complex use scenarios.
  • WordPress for multiple blogs (including the Wikimedia blog).
  • Etherpad
  • SugarCRM
  • Phabricator
  • Munki
  • DeployStudio
  • Atom
  • Wireshark
  • Puppet
  • Apache Directory Studio
  • GPG Tools
  • VirtualBox
  • Nmap
  • Loomio
  • Zulip
  • Jitsi at Wikimedia Meet (unofficial instance)
  • Znuny - "The ((OTRS)) Community Edition Fork with long-term Support (LTS)", used by Volunteer Response Team
  • diagrams.net (formerly draw.io)
  • pwstore
  • and many more.
Formerly used
Proprietary applications we currently use
Other

Wikimedia Nederland[edit]

Closed source
  • Xero, for accounting
  • Zoom for monthly Committee and Community meetings
  • Google docs for minutes and other documents
  • Google drive for short term storage of minutes etc.
  • GitHub pages for http://wikiclubwest.org.au/
  • Asana, for collecting metrics
  • Slack, for communications

Wikimedia DC[edit]

FLOSS tools used
Proprietary cloud services currently used
  • Podio for contact and project management
  • Zoom for video conferencing
  • QuickBooks Online for accounting
  • Gusto for payroll/HR
  • MailChimp

Wikimedia Finland[edit]

Contact

susanna.anas (at) wikimedia (dot) fi

FLOSS
  • WordPress
  • Etherpad
  • MediaWiki
Proprietary / Services

Wikimédia France[edit]

About
Association loi de 1901
Homepage
http://www.wikimedia.fr/
Contact
sylvain (dot) boissel snail wikimedia (dot) fr // jean-frederic (dot) berthelot snail wikimedia (dot) fr
FLOSS tools we use
  • MediaWiki - the open source wiki software which runs all Wikimedia projects. We use it internally as a coordination tool for our members and for our board.
  • LibreOffice - word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.
  • GIMP, Inkscape - bitmap graphics editor, vector graphics editor.
  • LDAP/OpenLDAP - a protocol to allow a single user login across all the tools our members are provided with (MediaWiki, Galette, Sympa)
  • Sympa - a mailing list manager (used especially by universities and other big lists). We replaced Mailman by Sympa, since it provides a better LDAP integration.
  • WordPress - CMS, for the official website/blog and several specialized websites
  • Piwik - Web analytics for all our websites
  • CiviCRM - constituent relationship management (more information)
  • GNU/Linux Ubuntu - Operating system running the staff computers.
  • Mumble - conference call system for board meetings − replaced Skype between August 2013 and 2014 and then again starting April 2015
  • Jitsi − onference call system for some working group meetings.
  • Phabricator − project management. The Wikimedia instance is used for joint projects with WMF (like the Wikimedia_Hackathon_2015) or public projects such as the WikiConvention francophone ; a self-hosted one for internal IT work tracking.
  • Nextcloud
FLOSS cloud services we use
FLOSS tools we used to use
  • SPIP - a content management system. We tried it for our new website but eventually used it for our first symposium (http://colloque.wikimedia.fr/2007)
  • GNU Cash - accounting software. It provides a double-entry bookkeeping feature.
  • Limesurvey Survey software
  • Galette - a membership manager. (pretty France-specific, poorly maintained and somewhat buggy, so not recommended). Was phased out in favour of CiviCRM since July 2012.
  • Scribus - a desktop publishing software for some of our work (eg for our annual reports). We are now using more Adobe InDesign.
  • Drupal, CMS, for the official website. Was phased out in favour of WordPress.
  • Bugzilla − bug tracking software for our internal IT needs. Was phased out in favour of a self-hosted Phabricator instance.
Proprietary applications we currently use
  • Adobe InDesign for our design work.
  • Ciel for accounting.
  • Staff machines are also equipped with Microsoft Windows (with Microsoft Office) as secondary operating system. (as main OS for accounting and design work)
Proprietary cloud services we currently use
  • Google Docs − mainly for its collaborative spreadsheet capabilities, marginally for collaborative writing (Etherpad/wiki are generally preferred)
  • Qualtrics for surveying
  • Google Forms for some internal surveying
  • Google Hangouts for remote participation to meetings, although Jitsi is getting more and more traction.
  • Trello for project management (projects like WLM, working groups tasks like GLAM)
  • GitHub for code hosting of volunteers projects.
  • 1Password for password management

Wikimedia Deutschland[edit]

About
Wikimedia Deutschland
Homepage
https://www.wikimedia.de/
Contact
info@
FLOSS tools we use
Proprietary tools in use
  • Asana

Wikimedia Italia[edit]

About
Associazione di promozione sociale
Homepage
https://www.wikimedia.it/
Contact
info snail wikimedia (dot) it
FLOSS tools we use
  • MediaWiki – currently used both as restricted public wiki for our website and private wiki for members and board. We also run on MediaWiki a few other wikis (e.g., WikiAfrica and wlm.wikimedia.it), and we had a few others in the past (e.g., Musica and Biblioteca).
  • CiviCRM – customer relationship management (2010–2015 and 2023–). We're using it to track members data and donors data and to send them newsletters (was replaced by a problematic proprietary Italy-specific Give for a while).
  • Znuny – an open source ticketing system (previously OTRS). We use it to manage many email addresses (generic request, membership application, ecc.). Now fully managed by Znuny GmbH on our own VM; previously OTRS hosted ~15 years by a member on his hardware.
  • Mailman – a mailing list manager. We use it to administer mailing lists (mostly discussion lists).
  • LiberaChat – a non-profit IRC network (freenode). We have a public channel there and used to have a couple of private channels (mostly used by our board for their online meeting)
  • MariaDB/MySQL is used for the MediaWiki, CiviCRM and OTRS
  • CheckFox – used to check dozens of spam messages to be moved to junk queue in own OTRS
  • GNU Cash – open source accounting (replaced by some Italy-specific proprietary software which only runs on Windows, used over RDP)
  • WordPress – for websites like wikimedia.it, wikilovesmonuments.it, archeowiki.it and others
  • Ubuntu – operating system for all computers in the office and computers shown in public events, most board members
  • Debian GNU/Linux – operating system for some servers (webserver, mailserver, database server, ecc.)
  • LibreOffice – word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.
  • Thunderbird – email client
  • GIMP – internally produced graphics
  • Nextcloud (at [5]) – file hosting/sharing and sometimes collaborative document editing, mainly for private files within the office and some members
  • LimeSurvey
  • https://framaforms.org – smaller surveys and data collection
  • https://framadate.org – date picking for member and board meetings (instead of Doodle) (technical info)
  • phpList (hosted) – occasional newsletters
  • Jitsi – internal meetings of the office/board/members and some webinars (public instance when few participants; temporary instance on a VM ad hoc for bigger ones)
  • Etherpad, Ethercalc, Cryptpad – some document drafting
  • Moodle – courses and lessons (integrated with BigBlueButton)
  • BigBlueButton – videoconferencing for internal meetings (staff, board, assemblies, external meetings and more)
  • Helios Voting – cryptographically secure elections during online general assemblies
  • Matomo (ex "Piwik") – web analytics (phab:T270746)
Proprietary software
  • Google Docs for some document drafting, usually by the staff
  • Google Forms for some internal processes (migrated to LimeSurvey in 2021)
  • Google Analytics replaced by Matomo in Dec 2021 (phab:T270746)
  • Dropbox for occasional sharing of internal documents replaced by ownCloud and then Nextcloud
  • Google Hangout or Skype for audio/video calls with third parties who rely on it (no known users in 2019)
  • MailChimp for some newsletters outside our traditional contacts (e.g. municipalities) [discontinued once in 2017 but then reappeared]
  • Some WordPress dependency we didn't manage to get rid of yet (like an ancient theme).
  • Staff often uses proprietary clients and executes proprietary JavaScript for GAFAM social media. (Originally, we only used libre clients for Twitter, identi.ca etc.) Some proprietary tools like Buffer/Dlvr.it and reporting tools are sometimes used too.

Wikimedia Toolserver[edit]

Historical. The project was shutdown on July 1, 2014 and has been replaced by Toolforge.
About
The Wikimedia Toolserver was a collaborative platform providing Unix hosting for various software tools written and used by Wikimedia editors. The service was operated by Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. with assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation. Being listed here is not necessarily an endorsement of the software ;-)
Homepage
http://toolserver.org/
FLOSS software tools we used
  • MySQL is used for the replicated Wikimedia databases we offer to users (community version is open source)
  • PostgreSQL is the backend database for our web properties
  • phpMyAdmin - some users prefer a GUI interface to our MySQL database. phpMyAdmin is by far the most popular
  • Apache HTTP Server - we use Apache for Subversion hosting and phpMyAdmin
  • Subversion - a revision control system for source code. we offer subversion hosting to our users
  • MediaWiki - for our public wiki
  • PHP - used to run MediaWiki, and by some of our web hosting users
  • WordPress runs the toolserver blog
Proprietary tools we used

Wikimedia Polska[edit]

Homepage
http://pl.wikimedia.org
FLOSS tools we use

Wikimedia Sverige[edit]

About
Non-profit organization.
Homepage
http://se.wikimedia.org/
Contact
john.andersson (at) wikimedia (dot) se
FLOSS tools we use
FLOSS cloud services we use
Proprietary applications we currently use
  • Windows - as dual boot on some of the laptops (when pre-installed)
  • ChromeOS - on laptops we use as spares at events
  • Google Authenticator - for 2-factor Authentication (CiviCRM, github, wikitech)
Proprietary cloud services we currently use
Being phased out
  • Nextcloud - Was used for: file storage, collaborative editing

Wikimedia CH[edit]

About
Non-profit organization.
Homepage
https://wikimedia.ch/
Contact
manuel.schneider (at) wikimedia (dot) ch
Tools we use
  • Drupal/CiviCRM - for external website, accounting, member register and online donations
  • WordPress - for project websites
  • MediaWiki - members wiki, executive wiki, chapters wiki
  • Tine 2.0 - groupware as webmail, shared and personal calendar, shared and personal address book, synchronised via Active Sync (phones), CalDAV / CardDAV (Thunderbird/Lightning, Apple Contacts/Calendar), WebDAV file storage (with OwnCloud sync, as Windows network drive or Linux mount.webdav2)
  • Courier MTA - mailserver (IMAP, POP3, SMTP)
  • RoundCube - lightweight Ajax webmail
  • Libre Office - word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird, Lightning, SoGo Connector (Windows clients)
  • Linux Servers - web server, mail server, backup server (office), GLAM Toolserver (office)
  • Matomo
  • LimeSurvey
  • Zabbix
Proprietary applications we currently use
  • Microsoft Sharepoint
  • Windows - office PCs, server (Terminal Server for accounting)
  • WinBiz - accounting software
  • Mac OS X - office PCs
  • Google docs - sometimes for document sharing
  • Skype - sometimes for meetings

Wikimedia Österreich[edit]

About
Non-profit organization.
Homepage
https://wikimedia.at/
Contact
manuel.schneider (at) wikimedia (dot) at
  • Drupal/CiviCRM - for external website, accounting, member register and online donations
  • Wordpress - for project websites
  • MediaWiki - members wiki, board wiki
  • Tine 2.0 - groupware as webmail, shared and personal calendar, shared and personal address book, synchronised via Active Sync (phones), CalDAV / CardDAV (Thunderbird/Lightning, Apple Contacts/Calendar), WebDAV file storage (with OwnCloud sync, as Windows network drive or Linux mount.webdav2)
  • Courier MTA - mailserver (IMAP, POP3, SMTP)
  • RoundCube - lightweight Ajax webmail
  • Libre Office - word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird, Lightning, SoGo Connector
  • Linux Servers - web server, mail server, backup server (office)
Proprietary applications we currently use
  • Windows - office PCs, server (Active Directory, server-based user profiles, WSUS, Terminal Server for accounting)
  • ELBA - accounting software
  • Microsoft Office
  • Google docs - sometimes for document sharing
  • Skype - sometimes for meetings

Wikimedia Ukraine[edit]

Tools we use
  • Fintrack, a custom financial software developed by Ilya (code not published?)

Debian[edit]

About
Project providing free and open-source software via a well-known Linux distribution
Homepage
https://www.debian.org/
Contact
admin@debian.social
Tools we use
See https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSocial

Creative Commons[edit]

About
Non-profit organization.
Homepage
http://creativecommons.org/
Contact
hackers (at) creativecommons (dot) org
Tools we use

Coming soon.

Wikimedia LGBT+[edit]

About
Wikimedia User Group. *(no office, not registered)
Homepage
https://WmLGBT.org/ > Wikimedia LGBT+
Contact
contact@wmlgbt.org
FLOSS tools we use
Proprietary applications we currently use

See also[edit]

  1. TOS. Maliciously misleading usage of "open source" to mean interoperable. No code anywhere.
  2. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290337