The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
Henry David Thoreau
RxLaboratory is not only dedicated to software development and teaching, training, helping people.
Our goal is also to show that another world can be built together, without mercantilism and capitalism, where emancipation and freedom of all the people comes from equality, financial independance and mutual assistance, in a world respectful of nature.
This is the reason why we’re always searching for new ways to fund, develop, and share what we do best: films (via Rainbox Productions), software, and teaching, and lead by example. We won’t lecture anyone and won’t judge anyone for their choices and their way of doing what they do, but we’re showing other ways, which work, and that we believe could make the world a better place for everyone.
Our methods
To achieve our goals, we’re always challenging our methods. Here’s our way of working, which is always evolving.
Work organization
As a cooperative, we have very strict rules concerning the work organization. For example, employees all have shares of the company; there is one, and only one, vote per person (and not per share) in the board of directors which include all shareholders; the benefit of the company is divided between investment and all the employees, in equal shares, there is no profit share.
And we’re going further beyond these rules. At RxLab., employees all have the same salary, and there is no hierarchy between us. Decisions have to reach a consensus.
Free Software
We believe in free and open source software, which is the only way to guarantee that our tools are both available to anyone in the world, and respectful of the total freedom of the users.
We’ve chosen to release our software under the GNU General Public License v3 which we believe is the strongest defender of this freedom, and guarantees that anyone using our software is free to do what they want, provided they respect the freedom of other users too, meaning that any derivative of our software will be free too.
And of course, we’re also trying the best we can to use ourselves only free software and replacing as most as possible proprietary software in our pipeline. This is not easy, and we did not manage to achieve a pipeline 100% free, but we’re working on it!
This also means we’re trying to get free of services from Alphabet / Google and other companies like that, replacing them by free (as in freedom) services, or moving to servers we own, instead of trusting private giant companies with our data.
Renewable Energy
All our electricity comes from Enercoop, a French cooperative which produces and sells only renewable energy (solar, eolian or hydroelectric) respectful of the environment. As a cooperative, this company also shares our social and economic values.
Community
Our software, our methods, our tools are also your tools! Actually, every time you read the word “we” here, know that you’re included.
We love getting your feedback as a user, and we love even more when users change into contributors. You’re very welcome for any kind of contribution, from simple feedback to translations to actual coding.
Friends, support, contributions
Funding
Unfortunately, we do not live in a world where everything is free (yet).
As we value transparency and depend on your contributions for our funding, let’s explain what this means. We’re not publishing the actual precise values as they’re not easy to calculate and we don’t want them to be misunderstood, not being accurate or comprehensive. But you’re free to contact us if you’d like to know more, we can give you rough estimates or discuss specific points.
The expenses
We have a lot of different stuff to pay for…
The hosting for this website, and making the tools available.
Writing the documentation, recording video quick tips…
The development, maintenance and updates for this website
Events organization
The actual software development and maintenance (updates and bug fixes)
Communication
The support: answering questions on the chat server, mails, etc.
Of course all of these include both stuff we have to pay for or buy, and salaries of people working on it.
According our principles and our way of promoting free software, we have to find ways for funding all this work.
The incomes
As we don’t sell our software, we’ve found other ways for getting what we need. But know that it’s still not enough!
Donations and funds from crowdfunding campaigns, received by Rainbox, are invested during times of development of brand new software or big updates, for the development, some translations, writing the documentation…
Patreon, received by Duduf directly, covers only part of his salary for the day-to-day software development, maintenance, communication…
The sales of the printed Duik user guide cover only… the user guide itself.
The sales of the Duik video course is by far the biggest income RxLab. gets, which is reinvested in salaries and communication.
Support us
We strongly believe that emancipation, free sharing and helping each other will make the world a better place for everyone.
We work in a non-mercantile way, there’s no ads, you’re not the product, we don’t track you.
We rely on your voluntary donations. It’s not mandatory, but it’s much needed. Please, donate what you can afford, what you think is the right amount.
Donate