# Awesome Open Company

A community-curated list of awesome open companies, inspired by the many awesome-x lists out there.

(click here to jump straight to the list below.)

Contributions to this list are welcome! Just edit the README.md (this document) and send the changes as a pull request. Guidelines are available.

## Table of contents

1. What is an open company?
2. Companies
3. Resources
4. Books
5. Articles
6. Videos
7. Similar lists
8. License

## What is an open company?

An open company is defined, for the purposes of this list, as a for-profit organization whose core practices are guided by principles of openness, transparency and interoperability. This philosophy can be summarized by the maxim:

> Share as much as possible, charge as little as possible.

derived from the original formulation by Gittip (now Gratipay).

In practice, this often means: - releasing its products as free and open source software, open content, or open source hardware - using open standards and inter-operable formats - developing its products openly, using public communication channels - publishing as much financial and operational data as possible, without compromising customer privacy. - etc.

The following pages provide a more detailed overview of this concept: - Open business: Wikipedia article - Open business: from the P2P Foundation wiki

## Companies

Company | Openness Pledge | Open Product | Statement | Open Finance
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Arduino LLC | Arduino - Introduction | :octocat:Arduino |  |
Atlassian | Company values — Atlassian | N/A |  |
Axem | DEM | :octocat:DEM |  |
Balsamiq | Company — Balsamiq | N/A |  |
Bevry | Bevry | DocPad |  |
Buffer | Buffer’s transparency dashboard: Public salaries, equity and more | :octocat:Misc | Why we have a core value of transparency at our startup | Revenue
CodeCombat | CodeCombat - Learn how to code by playing a game | :octocat:CodeCombat | Why you should open-source your startup |
Couchbase | Open Source Projects | :octocat:All Products |  |
Dangerous Prototypes | About - DP | Projects |  |
Daytona | Open Source | Daytona |  |
Documenso | The Documenso Manifest | :octocat:Documenso | Announcing Open Metrics | Open Metrics
Dreamwidth | About Dreamwidth Studios | :octocat:Dreamwidth |  |
Elastic | Openness, transparency, and collaboration are at the heart of all that we do. | :octocat:Misc |  |
GitLab | About Us — GitLab | GitLab |  |
Gratipay | Welcome to Gratipay | :octocat:All Products | The first open company | Finance
Growstuff | (archive) Values - Growstuff Wiki | :octocat:Growstuff | Why Growstuff is open source |
Lichess | Lichess terms of service | Lichess source code | Why Lichess will always be free | Costs
LulzBot (formerly Aleph Objects) | Choosing a Free License for Your 3D Project | LulzBot 3D |  |
MapBox | Open Source - MapBox | :octocat:Misc |  |
Neocities | (archive) Neocities - stats | :octocat:Neocities.org | The first Neocities Open Company report |
New Vector | Work in the open | :octocat:Misc |  |
Niteo | Niteo Handbook | :octocat:Pareto Security |  |
OpenCraft | OpenCraft — Open edX Development & Hosting Services | N/A |  |
ProtonMail | ProtonMail is Open Source! | Web Client; OpenPGPjs | ProtonMail Open Source Cryptography |
Read the Docs | Read the Docs Open Source Philosophy | :octocat:readthedocs.org |  | Funding
Red Hat | Red Hat Jobs - Our culture | Misc |  |
RStudio | What makes RStudio different? | RStudio - About |  |
Sentry | About Sentry | Sentry | Driven by Open Source |
SoftwareMill | 40 CEOs in 1 company | :octocat:Misc |  | Open finances
Tessel | Open Source - Tessel | :octocat:Tessel |  |
Transloadit | Open Source | :octocat:Uppy | Jobs & Culture |
wemake.services | wemake-services/meta § Purpose | :octocat:wemake.services |  |
Watermelon | Promoting Openness, Starting With the Codebase | :octocat:Watermelon |  |

### Pioneers

Company | Openness Pledge | Open Product | Statement | Open Finance
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Clarify | Clarify - Launch and manage your career | N/A |  |

## Resources

### Books

- Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams: Wikinomics
- James M. Whitehurst: The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance
- The Open Organization Field Guide

### Articles

- Paul Graham: What business can learn from open source
- Massimo Menichinelli: Business models for open hardware
- Roger Clarke: Open source software and open content as models for eBusiness
- Chris Anderson: A business model for open source hardware
- The Economist: Open-source business: Open, but not as usual
- Chad Whitacre: The second open company
- Timothy Cook: Why open companies? A new culture of business
- Shereef Bishay: The open enterprise manifesto

### Videos

- BetterMeans introduction

## Similar lists

- The Open Company Initiative directory (OCI): A group of companies which explicitly adopted OCI’s openness pledge
  - (dormant)
- The Open 100: a competition held in 2009-2010 to find the top 100 open innovation companies
  - (defunct — these links are from the Web Archive)
- The VAR Guy’s The Open Source 50 (2009 list, 2010 list, 2012 update)
  - (unmaintained)
- Awesome Open: A curated list of organizations, projects and initiatives that maintain open codebases and datasets

## License

This work and all contributions to it are released into the public domain under the terms of the CC0 1.0.