In a new push towards digital sovereignty, XWiki and Open Project announced working on a new integrated offer on 2 July. The French and German companies intend to provide an open source, European work management and collaboration alternative.
XWiki and OpenProject share similar values, centred around the principles of open standards, transparency, and user control. By integrating their solutions, the two companies aim to offer an alternative to proprietary work management tools.
“The partnership was a natural development,” explains Dan Jayes, marketing director at XWiki. “We are both part of the openDesk project and it was a natural fit in terms of values, business practices and culture, ambition, and technology.”
Building the Open Source Alternative
The market for enterprise collaboration and knowledge management tools has been primarily served by proprietary solutions. “To be able to counterbalance and offer an alternative to big tech, open source companies know they need to develop alliances,” explains Jayes regarding the new partnership between XWiki and OpenProject.
XWiki is an open source project that has been developed for the past 20 years. With its headquarters in Paris, the company offers an open source tool for collaborative knowledge management. Its free and open source licence make the solution particularly flexible and scalable. Institutions that have already made the switch from proprietary software include the European Parliament and the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
OpenProject, on the other hand, is a German-based company providing free and open source project management software. Its web-based approach makes it particularly easy for team members to access all project-related information. It provides a great alternative to proprietary software used for issue and project tracking across teams. Current clients include the state of Brandenburg and the city of Chemnitz.
“We had already migrated clients to XWiki and we noticed that many also used” proprietary software for project management, reports Jayes. Since the two companies were already in contact through the openDesk project, XWiki launched the idea of a “collaboration with OpenProject to migrate customers even more away from proprietary software.”
The collaboration does not create a new solution, rather it ensures that the two software are interoperable, offering an integrated package. “The combination of both solutions creates an open, modular stack that enables teams to collaborate efficiently without compromising on control, security, or usability,” explains the press report released by OpenProject.
Rethinking Public Sector IT Dependencies
The public sector has traditionally relied on large, global IT companies to provide the necessary infrastructure for operating services and software on workstations. However, recent geopolitical shifts and changing market dynamics have prompted European public administrations to reassess their dependencies and seek alternatives that ensure digital sovereignty. “The only true response for sovereignty is open source”, states Dan.
“The public sector is waking up” explains Ludovic Dubost, CEO of XWiki. In order to escape vendor lock-in and reduce reliance on major technology providers, open source software has emerged as a strategic solution. According to Ludovic, this approach also promotes local vendors and benefits the European economy.
Yet open source companies face their own challenges in competing with established market leaders. "To be able to counterbalance and offer an alternative to big tech, open source companies know they need to develop alliances," explains Jayes. The partnership between OpenProject and XWiki exemplifies this strategy. Both companies are part of the ZenDiS network and the openDesk project – initiatives designed to strengthen open source collaboration and provide viable alternatives for public sector digital infrastructure.
"The only true response for sovereignty is open source," states Jayes, summarising the philosophy driving this new collaboration.