This is OpenVuture

Technology belongs to you.

OpenVuture is not a classic IT service provider. It is an attempt to put technology back where it belongs – into the hands of the people who use it. We are not primarily driven by profit or revenue, but by our convictions and our idea of how the world could be.

Started small. Learned a lot.

It all began with a small home server project – and the name OpenVuture, which simply sounded good. What started as a manageable experiment grew quickly: more services, more configurations, more complexity. Until we realised the foundation wasn’t right.

So we set everything up again. From the ground up, starting over with the absolute basics.

What remained afterwards was more than a working system – it was the conviction that this is exactly what technology is about: making mistakes, searching, understanding, doing better. That feeling is what we want to pass on.

Technology can be better.

For quite some time now, the tech market has been moving in a direction that feels wrong – and for good reason. Devices you buy but don’t really own, and can’t fully control. Software that watches you, only to sell your own data back to you as a product. Subscriptions for services and devices that wouldn’t need them – if maximising profit weren’t more important than the product itself.

That is no law of nature, and supporting this system is a decision – and decisions can change.

OpenVuture is an answer to that. Not a loud one – but a deliberate one.

Open. For everyone. Forever.

Our projects grow out of curiosity. We pick what interests us, dive in, build it – and then make it available. No big lab, no full-time research department. More like a workshop where something is always taking shape.

Whatever comes out of it is always open. Open source, self-hostable, available to anyone – with no conditions attached.

For everyone who can’t or doesn’t want to self-host, we are working on an alternative: a provider that isn’t about profit, but about helping more people make the switch. That is still in progress, but it is coming.

This is what’s behind the name: venture into an open future. A world in which knowledge and software are open. Not as a utopia – but as a direction.

Your consumption is your protest.

You don’t have to be a developer, a Linux nerd or a tech enthusiast. You just have to pause for a moment and think about what you use every day – and whose interests you are strengthening by doing so.

Not out of paranoia. Not because privacy is the most important thing in the world. But because consumption determines the direction this world moves in.

In a world run by corporations operating far beyond our reach, individual protest is the strongest thing we have. Every app you replace with an open alternative. Every device you have repaired instead of throwing away. Every purchasing decision made deliberately.

That won’t change the world overnight. But they are steps in a direction that gives hope.

Not everything can be avoided.

We too are part of a world in which proprietary systems are deeply embedded – and we would be dishonest if we pretended we could do entirely without them.

In the shop we accept Google Pay, PayPal and Klarna. Not because we prefer to, but because smoothly working alternatives simply don’t exist yet in payments – at least none accessible and reliable enough for the majority of people. We are registered as a business on Google, because visibility starts there, whether we like it or not.

The same goes for social media. We have an Instagram profile – not out of conviction, but because that is where most people are. Reaching people who haven’t made the switch yet only works where they already are.

At the same time, we stand behind what can be done differently: we run our own Matrix and Lemmy instances and actively support the Fediverse – an open, decentralised network that belongs to no one and is controlled by no one. More instances are planned.

The principle behind it is simple: we use proprietary systems where no real alternative is left to us. Where one exists, we take it – and help build it.

Those are compromises. We would rather name them openly than quietly let them slide.