What the room is paying for — and what to use instead

Hi ,

It’s Reed, from the Free & Open Source Campaigning session at PIA 2026 last Friday. Thanks for being in the room.

This is the follow-up I promised: a synthesis of what every table wrote into the shared pad, paired with a free-and-open-source alternative for each, and a direct link to install instructions for every one.

What the room said, in one paragraph

Almost every table named Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or both. Adobe and Canva were the second-loudest line item — Canva especially. Zoom came up at three tables. Then the sector-specific dependencies — Netcare, the healthcare LMS gap, PowerSchool, Vretta, ADP, When2Work, Beanworks, Wrike, Sage, NewMode, CallHub, Freshdesk, Slack. The throughline, as CJR’s table put it: "We’d rather own our data, but we are limited in our tools. Where do we trade convenience for sovereignty?"

The gap most worth naming: almost no FOSS-native alternatives got written back into the pad. That’s exactly what the full post on the site fills in.

The full mapping

Read the full post →

Every SaaS the room mentioned, mapped to a FOSS replacement, paired with a one-click link to the official install docs. Organized by category — office suite, video calls, chat, design, websites, time tracking, surveys, help desk, campaign tools, finance, education — so you can scan straight to the subscriptions that hurt your budget most.

Where I’d start tomorrow morning

If you only do one thing this month, do this:

1. Clone the starter stack. github.com/adminatthebunker/PIA-BNKOP-SERVER — one server, one evening, replaces Squarespace + Mailchimp + a help desk. The install guide walks you through it from zero. No prior server experience required.
2. Then add Nextcloud for the office suite, on the same box. That’s the second-biggest lift removed.
3. Then attack design. Penpot for the team, GIMP + Inkscape on the staff laptops. Cancel Canva on its next renewal.

After those three, you’ve removed roughly 80% of the SaaS surface area named in the room.

More posts coming — and a way to talk

The harder categories — payroll, healthcare records, school SIS, peer-to-peer texting — need their own posts, and they’re coming. Reply to this email if there’s a specific category you want me to tackle next, or a tool you’re stuck on. I read everything that comes back.

And if your org wants to talk through what a sovereign stack looks like for your campaign work, that conversation is free. I’m Reed — I run The Bunker Operations, a worker co-op based in Edmonton building Canadian-sovereign, open-source digital infrastructure for grassroots organizations. Sliding-scale rates for non-profits and labour orgs.

→ Book a free 60-minute call with me

Thanks again for being in the room.

Reed, The Bunker Operations