What this post is about
- The four dimensions of our open source philosophy
- The power of transparent businesses
- Why it's smart to open up to community ideas and celebrate their successes
- Our success setup: Perfectly positioned with a foundation and a limited liability company
The world around us is becoming more and more complex. Not only the monopolization of tech corporations is proceeding apace - now pandemics and wars are also shaking the foundations of our social order.
It has always been my greatest concern to stand up for an open world - in which exchange and cooperation at eye level are more important than greed for profit and the preservation of power. That's why I founded Zammad in 2015!
By the way, the name is Bavarian and means "together". And this feeling reflects everything we stand for and how we appear. From our company culture to our software development.
Our open source philosophy:
Take a product that everyone can contribute to, …
Until today, many tens of thousands of hours have gone into refining and developing the smart helpdesk Zammad. But not only by our core team. It was clear to us from the very beginning that we would only arrive at the best solutions and ideas through exchange and collaboration with external developers.
By using this swarm intelligence, we leave the competition's proprietary solutions far behind with our open source tool. This allows us to react faster to changing requirements from users and the market. Anyone can suggest or submit a new feature.
So Zammad's secret recipe for success is no secret at all, but lies in the transparency.
Add to it a future-proof business model, ...
Opening up software development and sharing the results with everyone does not mean that we, as Samaritans, do not want to make money. On the contrary! I am responsible for a team of 17 people with big goals (maybe you will be one of them soon?)
Formally, we exist as the non-profit Zammad Foundation, which owns the official source code, provides the license for free and ensures that it will always be available for free.
On the other hand, with Zammad GmbH, we offer complementary services such as training, consulting and complete carefree packages. With this work, we help all those who want to get the most out of their ticketing system and leave maintenance, servicing, security aspects, and more, in competent hands.
Just imagine: We are growing over 80% every year! I truly believe that such a success story would not be possible without an open source approach.
Focus entirely on quality...
A central task of Zammad GmbH is also to take care of quality management. It ensures the continued development of the code and also that backward compatibility with existing instances is maintained and that the code remains uniformly readable.
While individual developers are free to customize the helpdesk according their needs, there will always be an official version that has been tested, that is the same for everyone, and that meets the highest security standards.
Users are also encouraged to submit feature requests or bug reports to the central software management GitHub at any time. We keep a constant eye on this list and react quickly. You can be sure that Zammad benefits immensely from these extra pairs of eyes.
And put the community and all users at the center.
In exchanges with our Zammad users we are always happy hearing about their big and small successes in communicating with their customers and partners. No matter if young startups, adult medium-sized businesses or municipalities and educational institutions, the enthusiasm of all these organizations is contagious and motivates us to keep going with full vigor every day.
On our site, we will introduce you to many enthusiastic users and the use of Zammad for all conceivable industries in more detail. Take a look at our customer stories and get inspired.
Summary
The secret to our open source philosophy? A setup of the greatest possible transparency paired with the highest quality standards. By always putting the success of our customers first, our success is no coincidence either. It is the result of a future strategy that is as consistent as it is resilient.