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Sustainability & Open Source

Open Source

Knowledge grows when you share it

We are convinced that change cannot be achieved with knowledge that is only the private property of some corporation and is therefore closed to the public. The code of wechange.de is therefore open source under the AGPL 3.0 license (details at https://git.wechange.de/gl/code/cosinnus).
 
We are open to technical cooperation and welcome feedback. Are you planning to integrate software elements on wechange.de? Are you a volunteer or professional developer and interested in our code? Or do you want to help develop wechange.de further? Contact us at wechange.de/cms/kontakt.

Sustainability

Lived instead of just promised

As a wechange cooperative, we stand for sustainable digitalization. We see digitalization as a tool that serves people's needs and that is why we align our products with those needs. We are guided by the principles of sustainability in order to act within planetary boundaries, promote social justice and support political participation. We have broken down exactly what we do to achieve this and what sets us apart from most other companies on this page. And in great detail, because sustainability is more than just a buzzword for us.

Ecological Sustainability

  • We host our websites and portals on 100 % green energy powered servers.
  • We pay attention to data economy in our work in order to avoid unnecessary data transfer and save energy.
  • We work decentrally and thus save a lot of travel.
  • We have an office space in a self-organized coworking spacewho shares our values and operates ecologically.
  • We use hardware for as long as we can and buy refurbished hardware whenever possible.
  • We use as little print material as possible and have it produced ecologically and CO2-neutrally.
  • At our team events and other occasions, we only serve vegetarian, mainly vegan and organic food.
  • For business trips, rail is always the priority means of transport.
  • We also pay attention to sustainable suppliers when it comes to office supplies.

Social Sustainability

  • Our services and products support all users in multiplying their own social impact and strengthening their community.
  • We have enshrined the common good orientation in our statutes
    Everyone in our team works part-time and remotely, which allows for flexibility in terms of time and location.
  • Our employment contracts are adapted to individual needs and at the same time designed to be as fair and supportive as possible.
  • We are socially and politically active in associations and clubs and with petitions such as #GenoDigitalNow.
  • We have opted for a socio-cratic corporate model with a high level of employee participation; for example, employees elect a board member from their ranks.
  • We pay transparent and fair wages based on the collective agreement for the public sector.

Economic Sustainability

  • We are a cooperative and therefore the company belongs to the members. You can Become a Member!
  • We have invested our money in a sustainable cooperative bank created.
  • Profits remain in the company and are used to invest in the further development of the platform, instead of flowing out of the company to partners or shareholders.
  • Our motto is “cooperate instead of compete” – preferably with companies that are also organized as cooperatives.
  • The further development of our platform is carried out in solidarity. New features that are financed by a portal partner then benefit all other portals, not least the freely accessible platform wechange.de.

Informational Sustainability / Data Protection

  • We produce and work with open source software, which is particularly sustainable due to its independence from individual companies.
  • The platform deliberately avoids integrating services and tools from major providers such as Google or Facebook in order to protect the security and privacy of users. Instead, only open source third-party tools such as Nextcloud and Rocket.Chat are used, which are operated exclusively on its own servers. This ensures that no connections are made to external servers and non-transparent tools that could potentially intercept data.
  • We are ISO27001 certified and meet increased requirements for data protection and information security.
  • We do not use third-party cookies, advertising banners, trackers or marketing tools. This protects users' privacy from unwanted data tracking and profiling by third parties and minimizes the platform's attack surface.
  • We make regular updates and patches. Continuous security updates and quick reactions to discovered vulnerabilities guarantee that you always have up-to-date protection.
  • Our servers are located at a trustworthy provider in Germany and the backup servers in the EU, so no data is transferred to the USA or other non-EU countries.
  • We adhere to user rights under GDPR. Our privacy policy defines clear user rights, including the right to information, the right to erasure and the right to rectification of data.
  • We only work with verified third-party providers that we need for the functioning of our platforms and list them precisely in the privacy policy.
  • We do not use Meta, Google, TikTok and Twitter (X) in our communication channels and use decentralized open source alternatives such as mastodon.
  • We organize our internal work with our own platform and are independent of monopolists such as Microsoft and Co.
  • We work transparently and enable everyone to make an informed decision about using our platforms. The open source code enables the community to identify vulnerabilities and fix them quickly.