Open Source Ethics and Values. Part 1: Socially Equitable

Open source software is built on principles of collaboration, transparency, and community benefit.

These principles naturally intersect with our ethical values in several ways:

1. Socially equitable. Open source promotes equal access to technology and knowledge, regardless of an individual’s or organisation’s economic status. By contributing to and supporting open source projects, we help create a more level playing field for libraries across the world, enabling institutions of all sizes to access high-quality software solutions.
2. Economically Responsible. The open source model demonstrates that it’s possible to create value and sustain operations without exploiting users or resorting to predatory business practices. Our approach to economic responsibility mirrors this, as we strive to provide value to our customers and community while maintaining a sustainable business. We believe in fair pricing, efficient resource use, and creating mutual benefit for all stakeholders.
3. Environmentally Conscious. Collaborative development leads to more efficient code, reducing energy consumption. Open source solutions can extend the life of hardware, reducing e-waste. Moreover, the open source community’s emphasis on remote collaboration aligns with our efforts to reduce travel and minimise our carbon footprint.

In the open source world, trust and community are paramount. By adhering to these ethical values, we not only contribute to the greater good but also build stronger relationships within the open source community. PTFS Europe believes that business can and should be sustainable, and successful, without compromising ethical values. Our commitment to these values helps ensure that our contributions are not just technically sound, but also ethically grounded and, as individuals, that makes us proud of the work we do.

As we explore each of these values in depth in the following blog posts, we’ll demonstrate how they shape our approach to open source development, our interactions with the community, and our vision for the future of library technology.

Fairness in Customer Support and Development

• Equal treatment of all support requests, regardless of customer size or request priority.
• Balancing paid and community work in development.
• Handling of bug requests with impartiality.
• Code review process: impartiality regardless of author’s background.

At PTFS Europe we have no “tiered” support system. All support requests are assessed by urgency and not by the size, or annual fee, of our customer.

“I need to support others in their work in the way that I would expect to be supported. When working with customers I need to respond promptly and clearly to any questions/requests and treat all customers the same, regardless of the size of their project with us – all customers are important and deserve the same level of service.”

Our team never prioritise paid for work over vitally needed community work. Priority is by urgency/deadline and matching other needs such as accessibility. We do however volunteer the use of our developers’ time and use our customer base to help promote and support that community effort where funding can be found, either sponsored by one customer or shared across a user group such as “Koha Academic Libraries UK.”

“Equity is a consideration when handling new development requests — paid, or not. We cycle our time between paid and community work, so that our customers can benefit both from exciting and sometimes vital new workflows, and a stable product set we can be proud of.”

Our team often volunteer to hold community quality and assessment roles annually – to ensure that new developments and code are stable, within guidelines for accessibility, and help decide on what code should become part of the new release versions.

“Working with and reviewing code, we do so with impartiality, fairness and justice for all people, regardless of the author’s social background or differences. Everyone in the community has access to the same opportunities and outcomes.”

 

Inclusive Work Environment

• Equal opportunities and outcomes for all employees.
• Flexible working policies reflecting modern work-life balance needs.
• Transparency in operations and HR policies

All our team work remote and flexibly and this has been the case since the inception of the company in 2007. There is one small office which is within walking distance of the Managing Directors home, so no commute for any of our team. Flexibility is a right for all staff, and this means our “office hours” are extended which also benefits our customer support.

“This is about fairness to me. Working with our employees should be, as much as is possible, open, transparent and fair. There is also the question of give and take – we have a flexible working policy in part because it does right by our employees and work/life balance, but also because it reflects in a way the principles of open source…you get out what you put in. Our profitability also is a factor here…we are a business, but we aren’t working in order to make things harder for libraries than they already are – we want our prices and services to be as accessible as possible.”

 

Contributing to Social Equity in the Library Sector

• Supporting libraries’ mission of knowledge sharing.
• Balancing profitability with accessibility for libraries. Pricing our services on the size of the library – not what the market will bear.
• Helping develop excellent software that is used at no cost around the globe – often in libraries with no alternative (and no budget for) solutions.

“Libraries have been my life’s passion. I am so happy that my work at PTFS Europe could help a tiny library, way across the globe, become a little more efficient, and continue to provide support to its community.”

“We want our libraries to deliver social equitability and we can help them do that. We can also provide a degree of social equitability in our workplace by giving people good working conditions. It is very rewarding to know we are doing our own small part in improving the lives of others, the environment and our own work/life balance.”

“It’s not difficult, really. Working in the libraries sector, whose raison d’etre is the sharing of knowledge helps here, as while we are a back-office supplier, the work we do enables people to learn, or just enjoy themselves recreationally (these days libraries do more than just loan books) so that’s just one of the perks of the job!”

 

Conclusion

PTFS Europe is a small company of less than 30 employees working remotely and flexibly, we are a near carbon zero company. We specialise in, and are committed to open source solutions for libraries (such as Koha) , this software is free to download, modify and use. When you become a customer with us, you are not buying the software – instead you are buying support, training, hosting, annual upgrades and development for your library system which also “pays it back” to the global open source community.

Social equity is important to us and this applies to our customers, staff and the wider global Koha community.  If our business is successful, every year PTFS Europe donates to charitable causes, last year a homelessness charity, disaster relief, support for older people and a cancer charity were chosen by our staff. Every time a customer volunteers their time to speak at a Customer Day or promotional event we donate to a charity of their choosing as a thank you.

It is important to us to be “good people” as well as doing good business. We love the fact that our work to develop the software and support the community benefits thousands of libraries across the world that would not otherwise be able to finance a library management system.

At PTFS Europe we believe the Future for libraries is …Open!