97 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
97 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
title: Remote Working with Open Source
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---
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pub_date: 2020-03-15
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---
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author: ungleich
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---
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: no
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---
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abstract:
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Remote working infrastructure at team ungleich
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---
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body:
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## Working at the time of Covid19
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So looks like 2020 is the year of remote working for a whole lot of people. Hey, welcome to the club! Our team has been working remotely since 2013, and now we are distributed in 5 different time zones. For us remote working has been a lot of fun, all you need is the right setup that enables everybody to be connected and be productive.
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We obviously couldn't do it without the digital infrastructure. Lately we've been getting a lot of requests for sharing tips for which tool or software to use for remote working, and we thought it'd be a good idea to share a practical list of tech stack we use in our daily business. So, here we go: remote working stack chez ungleich.
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## How we decide what to use
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Before we continue, an important disclaimer: we’re an open-source, sustainability- focused IT company. So we decide which tools to use by these criteria.
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1. open-source
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2. sustainablility
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3. state of the art
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4. usability for people with all backgrounds
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## 1. Chat: Zero carbon chat - Mattermost and Matrix
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You need a chat system when working remotely with your
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team, and you need it to be secure and hassle-free. We used to be on
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Slack at the very beginning, but we did not like the fact that Slack
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is hosted with AWS: from our point of view AWS datacenters are not
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sustainable compared to [our own renewable energy datacenter in
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Switzerland,](https://datacenterlight.ch) so we moved away from Slack into hosting our own chat.
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Now we have two chat systems, [Mattermost](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/zero-carbon-chat/) and [Matrix.](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/)
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Mattermost offers an extremely easy and smooth team communication for
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people with all kinds of backgrounds. Most of our team talk happens on
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this platform. [Our chat](https://chat.ungleich.ch) is open for the public
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and anybody can join with their email and have a conversation with
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us.
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[Zero Carbon
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Matrix](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/hosted-matrix-chat/), on the
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other hand, offers end-to-end encryption and federation, which makes
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it very attractive for people with high sensitivity for privacy and
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security. It also allows us to be more open. Matrix works nicely with
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video and audio calls as well, suitable for the secure conference call
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with different teams.
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## 2. Cloud storage - Nextcloud
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We are using hosted [Nextcloud](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/zero-carbon-cloud) for data storage and sharing. It supports cloud storage, file sharing between teams and real-time collaboration for document editing. It's pretty easy and we like to save data in Switzerland and not somewhere we don't trust how the authorities operate.
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## 3. Project management - Redmine
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[Redmine](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/project-management/) is our longest standing project management tool since the beginning of our company. It supports calendar, ticket creating, issue tracking, wiki, roadmap and more.
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Redmine is just very handy for managing multiple projects and subprojects, and giving access to different people can be done on a role basis. Our whole [data center infrastructure](https://redmine.ungleich.ch/projects/open-infrastructure) is actually in redmine & we open it for the public, so you can take a look to get an impression.
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## 4. Code hosting - Gitlab
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We used GitHub before, but [we decided to move to our own Gitlab in 2018](https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2018/10/18/moving-away-github/) due to GitHub's lack of #IPv6 support and some other issues. We are very happy with our new home, and that's why we're hosting Gitlab for our customers too.
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## A decision with sustainability goes a long way
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As we disclosed at the beginning, sustainability is an important factor for us so we run all of the above on our servers with renewable energy.
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Many of you who are new to remote working might have to make decisions in a hurry, but try to remember that decisions with sustainability in mind saves a lot of pain in the long run, and also saves our environment.
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## Questions?
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It can be overwhelming when you need to decide what to use for a new style of work: you'll have to use it every day and you want to make the right decision. Our approach is that we know where are values stand such as decentralisation, open-source, sustainability, and we try to make our decisions aligned to our values. For us working remotely with open source is fun and exciting, it gives so much freedom to everybody involved.
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If you have any questions on the above stack, our remote-working team is around to give you answers. ;) Stay healthy, and happy remote working to you all!
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