Sourcefabric is a non-profit organisation that develops open source software for independent news media organisations. It is based in Prague, Czech Republic, with branches in Berlin, Germany and Toronto, Canada. Sourcefabric was spun off from the Media Development Investment Fund's Campware project in April 2010.
Software products developed by Sourcefabric include:
Newscoop (formerly known as Campsite, renamed in 2011), a content management system for news websitesAirtime (formerly known as Campcaster, renamed in 2011), a radio station management applicationSuperdesk, launched 2011, a newsroom tool to manage the entire journalistic processBooktype, a book publishing tool, developed in collaboration with the FLOSS Manuals Foundation.Live Blog, a web tool that helps individuals and teams cover major events and ongoing stories in real time.All these applications are free and open-source software.
Sourcefabric also provides training for journalism students as well as professional journalists on how to use new media tools. It has had training and consulting activities in Africa (Senegal, Zimbabwe), various EU countries and Georgia.
In April 2011, Sourcefabric worked alongside West Africa Democracy Radio to build a news platform for the station using Airtime, Newscoop and Soundcloud integration. TagesWoche, a Swiss online and print newspaper, launched in October 2011 on a new version of the Newscoop platform with the new features Print Desk and Feed Ingest.
Awards and nominations
The West Africa Democracy Radio project was named as a special distinction winner in the 2011 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.Airtime was nominated as a finalist in the Packt Open Source Multimedia Software Awards 2011.Superdesk was nominated for the 2011 Ashoka Google Citizen Media Global Innovation Competition in November 2011.Airtime won The Guardian's Digital Innovation Award 2012 in the category Best Use of Technology for Social Change.In November 2012 Sourcefabric was one of the winners of the African News Innovation Award for Citizen Desk in Mozambique.Booktype won Silver in the Lovie Awards 2012 in the category Web Services & Applications.