Open company test

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Like many other companies before us, ShoutWiki decided to take Jonathan Nolen's open company test.

1. Open Sourcecode: Do you have access to the sourcecode? True open source is great, but simple access to the source code, even if it's not under an open source license, is often enough.

Yes. ShoutWiki uses MediaWiki for its wikis - MediaWiki is an open source software licensed under the GNU GPL license and anyone can download it for free. We also release the source code for most of our extensions.

2. Open Data: Can you easily get your data into or out of the application, should the need arise?

Yes. You can use Special:Export to export data from ShoutWiki-hosted wikis and Special:Import on another wiki to import the data. Specialized database dumps may be arranged upon individual requests.

3. Open APIs: Can your other software interact with the application? The best applications provide different means of access: GUI, command-line, RSS, SOAP or REST, for example. These additional avenues of access enable you to build more complex and customized solutions using the product. Remember the philosophy of small pieces, loosely joined.

Yes. Other software may interact with the wikis using MediaWiki's API mechanism. Its functions are available freely to any user and are well documented.

4. Open Pricing: Can you easily find out from the company's website how much the product costs, or do you have to talk to a sales-person? If it's the latter, they're hiding that information for a reason.

Yes. ShoutWiki is entirely free, unless you want the ad-free hosting plan. In that case, the prices are visible on that page.

5. Open Bugtracking: Can you access the real bug tracking system (not a neutered, customer-only bug ghetto)? Not all bugs (like security bugs) or information (like resource assignment) must necessarily be available, but the more the better.

Yes. See our Phabricator.

6. Open Feature Voting: Can you vote for your most critical issues and influence, to some degree, the allocation of development resources? There is obviously no guarantee, and there are dozens of factors that determine which bugs or features will be worked on in a given time period. But a user-visible voting system allows you to know that your voice is being heard and see how your request is balanced against other influences to effect the product.

Yes. You can request and vote for new features on our Phabricator or email supportshoutwiki.com to get an existing feature turned on for your wiki.

7. Open Communication / Open Community: Are you able to communicate with other users and with the developers of the product? There are many venues where this communication can occur: mailing lists, discussion forums, blogs (both employee author and customer authored) or wikis.

Yes. You can contact the ShoutWiki Staff through IRC, user talk pages, the contact form and email.

8. Open Documentation: Can users contribute to the product documentation? As I mentioned here, allowing users to help each other creates better, more accurate documentation. Knowledge hard-won through actual deployment and use should be shared as efficiently and directly as possible for the benefit of all.

Yes. All feature documentations are stored on this wiki and everyone can contribute to those pages.

9. Open Customer Support: Can you see tech support issues filed by other customers? Not every customer issue is appropriate to share with the world, but openness should be the default. Learning from other user's problems can help prevent your own.

Yes. All filled bug reports are stored in our Phabricator, where the staff examines them and fixes them.