Sourcefabric

Sava Tatić, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sourcefabric, talks to your host Vahe Arabian of State of Digital Publishing. Sava discusses the state of open-source tools for journalism. Sourcefabric is a non-profit organization that develops open-source software for independent news media organizations. Sava shares how their open-source ecosystem operates, how they are differentiated from others in their industry, and where most of the demand for their software is coming from? Episode Highlights: Sava Tatić discusses the background of himself and Sourcefabric. What is the difference between Sourcefabric and its competitors? Who was the first partner of Sourcefabric? How does Sourcefabric fund itself within the open-source ecosystem? Where does Sava see most of the demand coming from? How do they guild media organizations and publishers in the right direction and still cater to everyone else at the same time? How much time does his team spend maintaining and building on top of the products they already have as opposed to customer needs? When organizations come to him, how does he help them get the right brief to get their needs met? How can media organizations have a proper planning forecast to bring their needs to realization? What does their future look like in terms of software development? What advice would Sava give to his younger self? 3 Key Points: Sourcefabric’s first partner was Australian Associated Press, the main news agency that drives most of the news in Australia. Don’t be bound by the legacy tools that you have been using. Imagine the way that you would like to work. Sourcefabric doesn’t utilize a big marketing budget. They mostly reach people through word-of-mouth. Tweetable Quotes: “Sourcefabric, itself, we like to call ourselves Europe’s largest developers for open-source news media, which is true, because the competition is not that fierce.” – Sava Tatić “We could easily develop on top of our tools a contributor handling system because we track all of the statistics we group internally in terms of production. We can marry that to output statistics.” – Sava Tatić “We believe that quality journalism is the lifeblood of a democratic society. Now we are trying to prove that open-source technology is the backbone for that kind of journalism” – Sava Tatić Referenced links: Sourcefabric Sava Tatić

The State of Open Source Tools For Journalism With Sava Tatić – S2 EP 17