### Using All The Software Components to Build Federated Core
One of our best decisions, and we also had a number of bad decisions (but that's for another blog post), was to "trial" test different open-source software packages to see if we could fruitfully use them as a distributed, decentralized team building a stack of software, documentation, marketing materials for Federated Core.
We used Nextcloud as a traffic control. Nextcloud Files worked for sharing files and commenting on content. The service has a wonderful feature where test can be "posted" at the top of folders.
Of course, we used Jitsi for video conferences, and Matrix and Element for real-time chat and collaboration with folks outside of Federated Computer.
We used Vaultwarden for SSH key management (why not, it is our own, private installation!), our VPN allowed us to interconnect all of our different locations into one "virtual" office.
We used our integration with Gitea and Caddy to develop (using Hugo) all of our websites and publish them to the world-wide-web.
And we are using Listmonk to build our Customer community and communicate key new features and workflows discovered/used by Customers themselves.
All this without having to wonder how big a bill is coming into our CFOs email inbox and with the flexibility to mix-and-match data through the use of the many, many third-party clients available to us (and you).
