Open Source-First Initiative
Using Open Source in our Stack
Open source-first approach
We are no strangers to open source: we have been running Linux, PHP, and MySQL from the beginning. Since those days, we’ve grown out our open source – a lot. We pride ourselves in how we utilize open source and what we can do to give back to open source. Because it’s so important, it’s become an initiative for our business.
Priority to Open Source
The first part to our initiative is that when we are sourcing a software vendor, we will look for open source versions of the product first. While we do utilize commercial software, we have a strong preference for open source and we will only utilize commercial if it is determined that the open source equivalent is not able to meet our needs.
In most cases, open source does meet or exceed our needs and we will utilize these products. A good example of open source we use is listed on our Tech We Like page. For instance, the core of our business runs on AlmaLinux and Proxmox VE. AlmaLinux was chosen due to tracking Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its stability. Proxmox VE was chosen over VMware ESXi because of its stability, price, and features. We also store all of our code in a GitLab server and we heavily utilize Git for version control.
We have a large number of systems utilizing open source applications instead of commercial and proprietary applications. We continue to look for ways in which we can replace or extend commercial software with open source software. In addition to software, we are exploring open source hardware. The ability to make servers that fit our needs and that can be easily reproduced and improved on by other cloud and hosting providers is a top goal of ours.