We make elementary OS—the thoughtful, capable, and ethical replacement for Windows and macOS—plus AppCenter, the pay-what-you-can app store.

Hi! We're elementary, an Open Source software company with a focus on Inclusive Design. We founded our volunteer community in about 2007 and over the years we’ve been able to grow into a tiny company. Everything that we make is 100% Open Source and developed collaboratively by people from all over the world.

When building our software, we often have goals like: 🔒️ Protecting your privacy and ensuring that software asks for your consent ♿️ Supporting disabled folks with features that empower them to be independent 🎢️ Building experiences that make using your computer feel simple and fun 🤝️ Creating a direct feedback loop between you and designers and developers so that the things you care about are prioritized and addressed

We've never taken money from investors, always avoided tech hype bubbles like cryptocurrency and AI, and are committed to never monetizing the folks who use our software with predatory schemes like invasive advertising or data mining.

But We Need Your Help

We're made up of mostly volunteer developers working in our spare time. We'd like to grow our full-time staff and pay contractors to develop new features and fix issues. Since we collaborate with other software makers like GNOME and Ubuntu, our contributions often trickle out to the greater ecosystem of Open Source operating systems.

You can see who we sponsor from your contributions here: https://github.com/orgs/elementary/sponsoring

Plus we want to be able to regularly attend important conferences like GUADEC, LAS, and more to talk about our ideas, collaborate with other developers, and grow the Open Source community as a whole. Attending these events is critical for our participation in the development of foundational technologies like GTK and Flatpak, but international travel is often outside our regular budget.

With your help, we can pay more people to work on creating great Open Source software and attend important events where we can improve Open Source operating systems for everyone!