Bonjour, c/opensource@lemmy.ml!

Framasoft (that’s us!) is a small French non-profit (10 employees + 25 volunteers), that has been promoting Free-Libre software and its culture to a French-speaking audience for 20+ years.

What does Framasoft do?

We strongly believe that Free-Libre software is one of the essential tools for achieving a Free-Libre society. That is why we maintain and contribute to lots of projects that aim to empower people to get more freedom in their digital lives.

Among those tools are:

  • 20 FOSS based web-services that we host (mainly for our French-speaking audience) on our Degooglify Internet website, including Framadate and Framaforms… ;
  • many talks, workshops, and participations to conventions ;
  • A blog, where we share our views and where a group of volunteers translate into French news from the English-speaking FLOSS world ;
  • Many, many ressources to help people and organizations in their transition to ethical digital tools (guides, documentation, even card games!) ;

Framasoft is funded by donations (94% of our 2024 budget), mainly grassroots donations (75% of the 2024 budget). As we mainly communicate in French, the overwhelming majority of our donations comes from the French-speaking audience. You can help us through joinpeertube.org/contribute.

We develop PeerTube

In the English-speaking community, we are mostly known for developing PeerTube, a self-hosted video and live-streaming free/libre platform, which has become the main alternative to Big Tech’s video platforms.

From a student project to a software with international reach, our video platform solution is now, seven years later, used and acknowledged by many institutions!

The last major version of PeerTube, v7, has been released at the end of 2024, along with the first version of the official mobile app, available on both Android (Play Store, F-Droid) and iOS.

Now that the PeerTube platform has matured significantly over successive versions, we believe that the way to enable even more people to use PeerTube is to improve the mobile app so that it can be carried around in people’s pockets.

Ask Us Anything!

Last month, we have published the roadmap for the project. This week, we also launched our new crowdfunding campaign which focuses on our mobile app. We want to give you the opportunity through this AMA to give us feedback on the product and the project and discuss the crowdfunding campaign and our next steps!

If you have any questions, please ask them below (and upvote those you want us to answer first).

We will answer them to the best of our abilities with the /u/Framasoft account, from May. 28th 2025 5pm CET (11 am EST) until we are too tired ;).

EDIT (8:16 pm CET): This wraps it for the day, thanks for all of your questions and feedback!

  • Framasoft@lemmy.worldOP
    21·
    2 days ago

    Yeah, we think we worked hard but we still had a bit of luck

    We really think communication is important too. However, to be precise, even our colleague which joined us to start working on it was not an expert of the field. He was just a volunteer interested to work on our communication and started to do so. Some years later, we’re able to hire him so he could be truly dedicated to this mission!

    We thinks it’s better to hire someone being able to work with others and passionate about digital issues than an expert in a specific field. Technical skills can be acquired but human skills are harder to get!

    Concerning how we pay our staff: we pay a lot more than most non-profit organizations in France, but it’s less than what our employees could expect regarding their skills on the competitive market. Though, we think money is not the only reason why our talents stay with us: we also provide really good work conditions (We try to respect each one rythm and needs, either it’s material or something like following a training). Finally, all of our employees find a meaning in our mission (raising awareness about digital issues, providing alternative and respectful services to organizations and people, etc).

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      13·
      2 days ago

      Ye I know that there’s a lot of self-fulfillment coming from FOSS work. It’s why I do it even though I’m not getting paid. However being in Luxembourg, even market competitive rates are barely affordable, and good vibes doesn’t pay my rent, so alas if our org had enough money to pay someone, I would personally still have to continue with the wage work.

      It’s unfortunate that people give so much to for-profits, but people doing things that are objectively better for the world, have to tighten their belts to get by.

      Anyway, thank you for your time. You explained pretty much what has been my observations in the FOSS space. I agree with all your takes. Perhaps in the future Framasoft and Haidra might be able to collaborate.