Our giveback pledge
As part of our commitment to open source, Salsa offers 20% off any new and/or enhanced features (e.g. modules or themes) we build for our customers and contribute back to the relevant open source community. The register below shows the items we’ve contributed with our clients. We give the client a 20% credit based on the effort invested in the contribution, to be used however they see fit (within the project or elsewhere).
See our blog Salsa’s giveback pledge for more information.
More than just commits
Open source is about more than just the number of commits/pull requests. Open source is an ethos that can encompass a range of actions, from community engagement to event sponsorship to knowledge sharing through publications to open design to open sourcing documentation. Part of the ethos is also about celebrating and promoting people’s achievements and contributions across the different open source communities. This giveback register represents a way we can celebrate our clients’ commitment to open source in the form of sponsoring (with a little help from us!) improvements.
The register
Date | Agency/organisation | Giveback details |
November 2018 | GovCMS/Department of Finance | Open sourcing GovCMS training documents |
November 2018 | GovCMS/Department of Finance | Salsa sponsored one-third of the effort to have the GovCMS SaaS platform and application IRAP assessed. Salsa invested in the order of $45K at our own cost to ensure GovCMS is IRAP compliant to OFFICIAL:Sensitive. Read our blog |
October 2019 | Data.qld (Department of Department of Housing and Public Works) | Co-sponsorship of contributing new features to CKAN open data portal |
November 2019 | Department of Communications and the Arts | Salsa based our design for on the Australian Government Design System (designsystem.gov.au). At the end of the project’s design, we contributed back the design assets and user research from the project. We also contributed our time to align GovCMS base theme, the design government design system, and the specific design for classification.gov.au to assess re-use and contribution potential. |
August 2020 | WorkSafe | Four accessibility improvements to Victoria's Single Digital Presence. Fixes cover dynamic page announcement, page head, colour and HTML validation. |
August 2020 | The Architects Registration Board of Victoria | New search functionality for Victoria's Single Digital Presence |
May 2021 | Civic Aviation Safety Authority | Contributions towards a new, user-centred and accessible GovCMS D9 theme (CivicTheme) that can be reused across government. We conducted user research across navigation, usability, interactions and visual appeal for template designs. |
2021 | Department of Health | Partnering to give back eight new features to Victoria’s Single Digital Presence |
2021 | CivicTheme MVP build | Creating a design system for use with GovCMS D9 and other content management systems. |
2021 | Merlin | Improving the Merlin interface and associated open source documentation on . |
2021 | CASA | Partnering with CASA to create website user interfaces, conduct user research for navigation, usability, interactions and visual appeal. |
2021 | GovCMS and Drupal community | Event contributions and sponsoring $10,000AUD of community events |
We’re proud of these contributions and very grateful to the agencies above, who share our ethos for giving back to the open source community.
Feel free to reach out if you’d like to find out more about how our giveback pledge works.