Last week, Crust Technology contributed all of its software copyright to the Commons Conservancy Foundation under the name of the newly formed Corteza project (https://www.cortezaproject.org). The goal is to build “The Digital Work Platform for Humanity”, a completely free, open source and modern suite for private cloud digital work and productivity.

Corteza completes a decade-long personal journey for me. Running a great business is imperative and I’m both proud and humbled to lead a wonderful team here at Crust Technology. However, I also want to know that the work I do every day contributes to improving the world around me, that my moral compass is permanently pointed in a good direction and that I’m not compartmentalizing my identity into separate silos of what I do and who I am.

There are many fantastic open source projects out there, but it is frustrating and, arguably misleading, that such a volume of software vendors fly the “open source” flag high in their marketing while their business models are firmly anchored in proprietary licensing. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth does actually matter from time to time.

Corteza Messaging

By giving everything to Corteza and ensuring that all our future development takes place in the open, Crust seeks to deliver the safest possible business model for our customers. Over time, a market of Corteza solution providers will emerge who compete with Crust for their attention and they can never be deprived of the latest Corteza code. Crust Technology will always have to prove itself as the leader of this market and compete for these customers, otherwise it will slip down the pecking order. We’re good with that pressure to stay on top.

Corteza CRM, built with the Corteza Low Code platform

Best of all, the benefits of Corteza are for everyone forever. We’ll be launching initiatives to build configurations of Corteza for purposes ranging from Humanitarian to Health to Public Sector programmes. All will be completely free and open source. Nourishing this outreach is critical to our goal to build the Digital Work Platform for Humanity. Please come join the effort at https://latest.cortezaproject.org or read more about Corteza at https://www.cortezaproject.org or about Crust Technology at https://www.crust.tech.