XWiki is a powerful knowledge management platform, it allows teams to build, centralize, organize and navigate the information. It is built on top of the wiki model, which allows both flexibility and ease of use working with information silos.

XWiki is also an Open Source software : both the product itself, and its extensions are released under LGPL licence and available on GitHub [1] [2]. In order to finance the development of the software and its ecosystem, a company “XWiki SAS” was created in 2005 in order to provide professional services around XWiki.

In this talk, I will present the business models that XWiki SAS uses to provide services on top of the XWiki software. I’ll also discuss the organizational mechanisms that are in place in order to separate the activities and strategic decisions of the Open Source project and the company, in order to avoid product cannibalization. Finally, we’ll go through a few examples of how we work with clients that integrate XWiki in their organization in order to incentivize financing and contributions to the Open Source software.

I’m a passionate web developer, with a strong interest on how to build Open Source software that lasts. Today, you can find me working on the XWiki and CryptPad projects, as well as contributing to OpenFoodFacts.