We’re pleased to announce that the Flattr extension is now open source.

Openness and transparency are incredibly important values for us. We’ve always known we’d make our extension open source, so now anyone who is interested can check out the code, dig into how our extension works or even contribute to the code. We also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has already sent us suggestions, comments and bug reports.

Openness == accountability

Making our extension open source means that we’re committed to being transparent and being accountable to our users. We know that because of the nature of how flattrs are given that there would be questions around privacy, tracking and security, and we know it’s better to show what we do, rather than simply just tell. The Flattr extension is under the GPLv3 license, which gives us and the community the freedom to discuss concerns, contributions and improve flattr in an open setting. You can check out our extension on the GitHub repository now.

eyeo uses several open source solutions, for internal communication, development, or employees that run Linux on their machines. Adblock Plus is open source, and we recently joined the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Flattr is now another milestone in our open source way of working.

Our extension, in a nutshell…

The Flattr extension was a huge part of our relaunch last October, and came about because we realized that for Flattr to be effective, flattring had to be effortless and automatic. The extension awards flattrs on an attention basis, you can read more about the Flattr Algorithm here on our blog.

The Internet is better when it’s open and collaborative, and making our extension open source is one way we can show our commitment to these values.