Group: Free software at workplace

Many free software supporters worldwide are forced to give up their freedom when they log in to work. No matter how far you try to climb the Freedom Ladder in your private life, the real challenge starts when your employer forces you to use proprietary software at work. No one should be forced to use nonfree software to earn a paycheck! Software that employees have to work with should always respect their freedom.

Let's work together to get companies and organizations to adopt free software at the workplace. Here are some ways you can contribute to this wiki page and group:

• Add libre programs your organization or company uses, or any free software an organization can easily adapt, to the list below.
• If you come across any stories or examples in which a company or organization is adopting, debating, or even just discussing free software, please add whatever information you can to this page.
• Share any appeal letters or text you have written to your employer, union, or coworkers to inspire others to do the same.
• Share links and info about any other mailing lists or groups involved in promoting free software at the workplace.

For arguments you can use to convince your employer to transition to libre software, see our article "The software we have to use at work must respect our freedom".

Libre programs for organizations

• Promote your organization on the fediverse with Mastodon and PeerTube;

• Use a free browser like GNU IceCat or Trisquel's Abrowser;

• Let your employers know they aren't forced to use Zoom or MS Teams: offer them a BigBlueButton, Galene, or Jitsi Meet instance;

• Let employees use a freedom-respecting chat software, like Mattermost or Matrix instead of Slack or Teams;

• Replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice or Calligra, which also come with the benefit that you can safe files in the OpenDocument format;

• For a Voice over IP (VoIP) or Internet phone, we recommend Linphone and Asterisk;

• Replace the proprietary Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software you use with CiviCRM;

• Do you also need an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system? Try Kivitendo, which combines CRM and ERP;

• Instead of Microsoft 365, host Nextcloud on your server or use a collaboration tool like Ksuite;

• Track external and internal requests with Request Tracker; and finally

• Make the switch from Microsoft or MacOS to GNU/Linux.

While the above are great for a wide variety of organizations, we also want to give a handful of examples of free software that is popular among companies specialized in science and engineering:

• OpenFOAM, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) toolbox;

• FreeCAD, Computer Aided Drawing based on OpenCasCade, Qt and Python;

• GNU Octave, a high-level interpreted language that is specialized for numerical computations; and

• Scilab, a powerful computing environment for numerical computation.

For organizations that need freedom-respecting software for publishing, advertisement, video creation, and image editing, consider trying some of these:

• Scribus, a professional page layout program that generates press-ready magazines, leaflets, and posters;

• Blender, a powerful 3D creation suite, which was used to create “Flow,” the movie which won the 2025 Oscar for the best animated film;

• KDEnlive, a video editor with dual video monitors, a multi-track timeline, clip organization, efficient media ingestion, and a professional-level editing experience;

• Inkscape, a popular vector graphics editor;

• GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program; and

• Krita, A cross-platform digital painting application.