CERN trades Facebook Workplace for open source system Mattermost

After making changes to CERN’s Facebook Workplace account, Facebook has decided to move to open source alternatives such as Mattermost and Discourse.

CERN reports that on Friday it will stop Facebook Workplace, a business platform that includes the ability to create groups and exchange chat messages. The Switzerland-based nuclear research organization writes that it used Workplace after Facebook offered it free of charge.

Last year, Facebook announced new paid subscriptions, after which CERN was also notified that it had to pay or switch to a stripped-down, free variant. The latter option would mean that CERN would lose administrative rights and user data would be sent to Facebook.

CERN decided to investigate alternatives, also because many employees of the organization had indicated that they would prefer not to use a tool from a company that they do not trust for privacy reasons. Still, about a thousand employees had created an account and about 150 employees were active on Workplace every week.

CERN now uses Mattermost for instant messaging and Discourse has since been used as a discussion platform. This year the organization will start using platforms for notifications and newsletters. In the summer of last year, CERN already announced that it was moving away from Microsoft products and using open source alternatives, because of the high licensing costs for the Microsoft software.