Managed Software
The bulk of our hosting is managed open-source software applications. If there’s a system that you need to run your community group, we might be able to host it for you, and ensure it stays up to date with the latest fixes.
Each different software product we host requires us to build up the skills and automation to do it well, so we’re slowly adding them one at a time. Additionally, to start with we’re going to try and choose one popular open source application in each category, rather than try and support all possible ones. We have reasons for our choices, and we encourage you to see if they might work for your group before.
Documentation
Community groups often need to collaborate on an internal knowledge base or shared documentation. This might include meeting notes, operating agreements, shared project plans, and so on.
Cloud examples: Notion, Google Docs
Dokuwiki
Wikis are a great way for a group to collaborate on a store of knowledge, either privately or to share it with the public. Wikipedia is the most famous wiki, and it’s powered by an open source platform called “MediaWiki”, which has a lot of bells and whistles.
We’ve instead opted to run a simpler Wiki called Dokuwiki, which we think is more suitable for local community groups. While it is extendable with plugins, it’s simple nature lets people get writing very quickly.
Chat
Community groups often need a real-time chat platform. Perhaps they start with a group on WhatsApp or Signal, but as they grow they need something that supports different channels for sub-groups and topics.
Cloud examples: Slack
Matrix & Element
Matrix is an open protocol for chat servers which provides all the features you’d expect from something like Slack, such as channels and threads, but is encrypted and federated.
Encrypted means that even though we may run the server that powers it, there’s no way for us to see your messages. Federated means that you can chat to people all around the world, even if they are connecting to a different Matrix server as their “home server”, because the servers pass messages between them.
Matrix is an open standard that supports multiple clients, but Element is it’s most polished client app, and works on iOS, Android and Web.
Something else?
We’d love to hear about what software your community group needs.
Contact us to arrange a chat.
Custom Hosting
Instead of software managed by us, you might be more technical and you want access to general hosting services that you can instead your own software on.
We are not hosting in some mythical cloud. Our servers are real physical things in Merri-bek, and we need to plan the number of machines, and the number of solar panels needed to power them, based on usage we understand. This means we’re cautious about just letting anyone host anything they want.
However, we also want to support local makers and tinkerers. So, at this stage we are only accepting custom hosting on software you have been involved in the development of yourself.
Contact us to arrange a chat about details.