A decision tree to help your organisation adopt open source software without the hassle of managing a server | 12th March 2025

This is a follow up post from:

Does using open source software means that I have to maintain servers myself?

In that previous post we saw that you don't necessarily need to host freely distributed and open source software yourself for your organisation to use freely distributed software.

But, if freely distributed software need to be install or run somewhere then,

• Where shall software run then?
• or, which server shall you use?

This is a decision tree to help you figure how you can use freely distributed software.

Before you use software on third-party server, you should see if you can run it locally. So the first question of this decision tree is:

1. Can I use this software locally?

List of software of you can use locally:

• LibreOffice
• Pluma
• Abrowser
• git
• etc

Yes -> great, go on and install that software on your computer.

No -> next question.

2. Would a peer-to-peer software do the job?

List of peer-to-peer software:

• Tox
• Syncthing
• etc

Yes -> great, go on and install that software on your computer.

No -> next question.

3. Is an organisation running an instance I can use?

List of organisations running instances of freely distributed software, for example:

• Ghost: blog, (paid) newsletter
• Disroot: jitsi, Matrix, NextCloud etc
• Ouvaton: Sympa, Website, etc
• Autistici: website/blog
• etc

Yes -> great, go on sign up/create an account on that instance.

No -> next question.

4. Can I find an organisation that would run that instance for me?

List of organisations that can run a standalone instances of freely distributed software for you:

• Hostsharing e.G. or Pâquerette, for example