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For the second consecutive year, the CommonsCloud project, the alternative to Gmail and GoogleDrive, with which we offer pooled digital cloud tools to telework, communicate and collaborate online with free software and under technoetic principles, has received the support of the Department of Labour of the Generalitat de Catalunya, through the Singulars Covid19 grant (Measures to support singular projects for socio-economic reactivation COVID-19 for cooperative enterprises).
Access to digitisation is controlled by a few technological giants, known as GAFAM: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. The services offered by these providers exploit user data to make targeted advertising more effective and even to model the behaviour of users, individuals and organisations. In contrast, CommonsCloud offers pooled services for collaborative work based on free software, produced by us, the integral cooperative femProcomuns, together with the cooperatives bTactic, Colectic and LliureTIC team.
Currently, the service includes different tools according to the needs of each user. The most widely used is the online office, with storage and sharing of documents and images, text editing, spreadsheets, presentations, calendar and surveys. The basic Office includes a free email account. It also offers videoconferencing services, agora, advanced forms, business manager and mail service with multiple accounts also for the entities that need it. All these services share the same user account management system, so there is no need to have a different password for each of them, and with the advanced services, organisations can manage permissions for their users.
The grant will serve to position CommonsCloud in Catalonia, especially in the field of leisure, non-formal education and users of digital literacy centres, facilitating access to the tools, providing grants for users and offering open services and creating communication content aimed at these groups.