CHATONS

CHATONS is the French acronym of the "collective of independant, transparent, open, neutral and ethical hosters" (Collectif des Hébergeurs Alternatifs, Transparents, Ouverts, Neutres et Solidaires).

As you may have guessed from the logo, Chatons is French for kittens.

It is a collective of small structures offering free services initiated by the association Framasoft.

Their goal is to imitate the model of community-supported agriculture in the agri-food sector and apply it to internet services. This strategy would allow, among other things :

• to develop many free and respectful alternatives to privacy for the services of the big 4 ;
• to do so at a lower cost because the server load (often the number of users) is distributed over the significant number of hosting structures ;
• to decentralize the Internet again to prevent a small number of entities from having control over too much personal data, which can affect everyone's freedoms ;
• to reinforce trust between the host and the user by making it possible to choose a structure by geographical proximity or even affinity : it becomes possible to meet your host, to buy him/her a beer... You definitely wouldn't do that with Google's CEO.

The services offered by these structures could include, without any limit, the hosting of emails, files, websites, agendas, collaboration tools, communication, etc.

However, CHATONS's members must respect a charter committing them to :

• Use only free software;
• Do not exploit users' personal data on the services they offer;
• Do not track users or have an advertising agency;
• Plan structurally for regular meetings with its users.

Find the complete charter of the CHATONS on this page.

The presentation of the CHATONS is available on their website (french).