Our commitment to open source

Why open source matters

Proprietary software creates dependency. When your business runs on software controlled by a single vendor, you are subject to their pricing decisions, their product direction, their data practices, and their continuity. If they change terms, increase prices, discontinue a product, or are acquired, you have limited options.

Open source removes that dependency. The software is freely available, can be inspected and audited, can be modified to suit your requirements, and can be maintained independently of any single vendor. Your data remains yours, your processes remain yours, and your choice of service provider remains yours.

For businesses choosing their technology stack, open source provides a competitive advantage: lower total cost of ownership, freedom to integrate and customise, and resilience against vendor lock-in.

How we use open source

Cloudient's entire infrastructure runs on open source software. From the operating systems on our servers, through the virtualisation and container platforms, to the applications we deploy for clients — there is no proprietary software in the stack.

This is a deliberate choice. It means:

• Every component is auditable — clients or their auditors can verify what is running
• There is no vendor lock-in at any layer of the stack
• We can customise and adapt any part of the environment to suit client requirements
• Software can be maintained and updated indefinitely, without licence expiry or forced upgrades
• Hardware life is extended — there is no planned obsolescence driven by software requirements

When we deploy applications for clients — whether Odoo, Nextcloud, Jitsi, PeerTube, or bespoke solutions — we use the community editions and contribute to the ecosystems that produce them.

Community involvement

We are members of the Odoo Community Association (OCA), the organisation that coordinates development of the Odoo Community edition and its ecosystem of modules. This membership reflects our commitment to the Odoo open source community and ensures we remain close to the development of the software we deploy.

Beyond Odoo, we participate in the broader open source and digital commons ecosystem. We believe that sustainable digital infrastructure depends on active participation — not just consumption — of open source projects.

Open source and security

A common misconception is that open source software is less secure because the code is publicly available. In practice, the opposite is often true. Open source software benefits from broad review by independent developers and security researchers. Vulnerabilities are found and addressed by the community, and fixes are available to everyone immediately.

Proprietary software relies on secrecy as a security measure — "security through obscurity" — which does not withstand sustained scrutiny. Open source software relies on transparency, peer review, and the ability of anyone to verify that the software does what it claims.

We complement this with our own practices: regular code scanning, dependency checks, and infrastructure hardening. Our clients benefit from both the community's vigilance and our operational discipline.

Open source and sustainability

Digital systems consume significant energy. One of the less obvious benefits of open source is its contribution to sustainability.

Proprietary software frequently drives hardware replacement cycles through increasing system requirements and end-of-support policies. Open source software can run on existing hardware for much longer, reducing waste and the energy cost of manufacturing new equipment.

Our approach extends this further. We do not process client data for analytics, advertising, or AI training. There is no unnecessary background processing consuming energy. The systems we run do what they are configured to do, and nothing more.

Open source and data sovereignty

When your services run on open source software on infrastructure you control (or that your trusted provider controls), your data stays where you put it. There are no opaque data processing agreements, no third-party analytics, and no ambiguity about who has access to your information.

Combined with our choice to host in European data centres under the EU data protection framework, this provides a level of data sovereignty that is difficult to achieve with hyperscaler platforms or proprietary SaaS products.

The alternative to SaaS and hyperscalers

The technology market increasingly pushes businesses towards SaaS subscriptions and hyperscaler cloud platforms. These can be convenient, but they come with trade-offs: loss of control, data dependency, unpredictable pricing, and vendor lock-in.

Open source, deployed on managed infrastructure, offers a genuine alternative. You get the convenience of a managed service with the control and independence of running your own software. The cost is predictable, the data is yours, and you are never locked in.

This is the service Cloudient provides. We are not anti-cloud or anti-SaaS — we recognise they have their place. But for businesses that want control, transparency, and independence, open source on managed infrastructure is the better path.