Report by Nicolas Dufresne, co-president of the association.

From the founding of the association RxLaboratorio until the annual general assembly of 2026.

Most of the work of the association during this first year and a half of activity has been to get our new platform up and running, and start distributing free and open source software and related content.

We’ve also started to work on popular eduction on the challenges of digital technology and the cultural commons.

Foundation

RxLaboratorio was founded as a French association on August 24, 2024.

It is the object of the association:

• to encourage and promote the development and use of open computer programs, especially in the field of audiovisual production, whose source code is accessible, and that empower the freedom of their users to use, modify, share, and share their modifications of these programs, as a supportive and socially equitable partnership between the creators and the users of these programs,
• to contribute to popular education on the challenges of digital technology and the cultural commons, as well as the sharing of skills and expertise of the creators and the users,
• to favor the reduction of the impact of audiovisual production on the environment, on global warming and on biodiversity,
• to promote social connections, social responsibility, and a sense of community and trust among each other,
• and all ancillary, related or complementary activities useful directly or indirectly to the achievement of this purpose.

The first months after the foundation up until 2025, most of the work of the founding members was to build the website of the association and prepare all the organization needed to start distributing free and open source software and related content like tutorials and books on a brand-new platform.

This was a lot of work to make everything ready to first welcome the content created by Nicolas Dufresne and start running the platform.

The online platform

From the website available at rxlaboratorio.org since early 2025, anyone can download the free software the association distributes, access free and paid tutorials or order books. Users can also donate to support the association, the developers of the tools and authors of the tutorials even if they’re free.

Tools

As of March 2026, we distribute more than 11 free and open source tools by 3 different authors, comprised of:

• 3 independent applications or open format and frameworks.
• 4 scripts for Adobe After Effects
• 2 Plugins for Autodesk Maya
• 4 add-ons and assets for Blender
• 1 plug-in for Krita

Although Adobe After Effects and Autodesk Maya are not free and open source software, we do distributes free and open source add-ons for these apps, as we don’t want to let down the many users still using them. Our goal is to introduce them to free software, show them it can ease their work, and most of all, share the knowledge and expertise of our content creators with as many people as possible.

There are approximately 11,000 downloads per month (360 per day), most of them being downloads of Duik, the rigging and animation tool set for After Effects.

Tutorials

3 paid and 3 free tutorials and courses are available on our platform. That’s a total of approximately 27 hours of video.

There are approximately 300 views per month (10 per day), most of them being of the Official and Comprehensive Video Course about Duik Ángela, and another significant part of The comprehensive course about animation with After Effects.

Books

7 books are available to buy from the website. We’re selling less than 5 books per month, but they’ve all been available for a long time, and we think newer books would have more success.

Popular education, community, social connections

Since the foundation of the association, Nicolas Dufresne, co-president, has had the occasion to participate in a few events in France and talk about free software for motion pictures production in the name of the association.

The association is also running a chat server available on chat.rxlab.io where anyone from everywhere can be part of our nice community, get help, share ideas. We want this to be a safe and inclusive place for everyone.

Challenges for the future of the association

The association is now running smoothly, and we’re in the process of developing more actions towards popular eduction. We’d like to welcome many new developers and content creators too, and continue sharing awesome free software, tutorials, books, knowledge and ideas…

But the association is always facing new challenges:

• The rise of AI poses a threat on free software, and the use of plugins, scripts, add-ons like the ones we distribute may decrease a lot in the near future, because of AI easily replacing the most simple ones, or even whole features of some others. We see this as a problem because it contradicts our work for the emancipation of the people who, instead of being freed by their open source software, will be tied to the publishers of AI services. Moreover, AI is a big problem in many fields, and it’s our mission to educate the people about it.
• These AIs swallow our content, especially the user guides, tutorials and even the source code of the tools, and the number of visits on our website is dropping because users are captured by AIs.
• The amount of donations is stagnating or even decreasing, because of the decrease of the number of users and visitors on the website, but also because we need to be more present on social networks and other places to advertise our content and our work.

Committee report by Nicolas Dufresne.

From the founding of the association RxLaboratorio until the annual general assembly of 2026.

Content distribution

As the association distributes free and open source software and other related content, and as stated in its statutes, a part of the donations and membership fees it receives is redistributed to the authors of this content, to work for their emancipation.

To ensure that this financial compensation is fair, the committee had to decide how the part for each author is calculated.

We’ve made sure the largest part of this compensation is not linked to the success of the content, to help contributors who work on niche content get a fair part anyway. Only a minor part of the compensation is linked to the number of downloads (or views, for tutorials) ; this minor part is necessary to prompt the authors to help the Publikaj Rilatoj committee with the communication about their content, and it also acknowledges the fact that more successful content leads to more work for supporting users.

Artificial Intelligence

An association promoting free and open source software could not stay silent about Artificial Intelligence. The Etiko lead some reflections about AI which eventually became our manifesto about AI.

This manifesto has been written in French and is being translated into English before it’s made available for everyone. It will be publicly accessible through the website of the association.

The Etiko also lead a reflection about our process for selecting content for distribution by the association had to be adjusted regarding the potential use of AI by authors. We’ve prepared new explicit rules to address this issue, which will be published along with the description of the whole content distribution process.

Committee report by Cédric Villain and Ana Arce

From the founding of the association RxLaboratorio until the annual general assembly of 2026.

Naming

The foundation of the new association for the promotion of free and open-source software in creative and audiovisual production, required finding a name and a singular visual identity that would allow it to be spotted in the world of the distribution of free tools and software. The committee was tempted to imagine an original identity, but the filiation with the former RxLaboratory entity was deemed necessary by the majority in order not to disrupt the former brand acknowledgment and recognition, already acquired after several years of existence by its users.
The name RxLaboratorio seemed consensual, the link remaining obvious and the ending “io”, in addition to citing the Esperanto phoneme adopted in the communication of the association or a slang form of “you” or “yes”, which could refer to the contraction inpout-output used in analog or digital nodal systems.

Language

The international nature of the association forces the use of English as the main language of communication, followed by French, Spanish and Esperanto. Translations into other languages are possible thanks to the collaboration of the community.

Visual identity

For the visual identity, it was decided to keep the main elements of the graphic charter gradually put in place by Nicolas Dufresne for RxLaboratory and RxLab.
The mascot of the six-tentacled octopus has been preserved, and the hexagonal cell has become one of the identifying elements, quoting the French origin of the structure and the emblematic shape of the tool gear (cogwheel). The colors have been arranged to give a darker (darkmode type) and contrasting appearance, the use of the free ‘Nunito’ typography has been generalized and the ‘Font Awesome’ pictograms have been adopted for the majority of uses.
Since the pronunciation of the name of the association could be interpreted as ‘Eric’s laboratorio’, the octopus was named Eric by the members of the committee.

Link to the association’s graphic charter: http://gofile.me/6Ucqf/IbZdpcyxo

Domain Name

To signify its dimension as a non-profit organization, the .org DNS was prioritized, even if the .com was reserved and the .io seemed an interesting alternative. The cost and the slightly too trendy dimension of .io were considered unnecessary and counterproductive for the association.

To deploy its visual identity and communicate to as many people as possible, a number of tools and strategies have been developed:

Digital communication

• A website: developed with the free WordPress CMS, at the address www.rxlabopratorio.org, the graphic design and the animation of the home page banner were created in connection with the new graphic charter of the association.

• Visuals and motion graphics In order to complement the communications, some visual elements have been created by Cédric Villain and Claude Autret “Jissse”, which follow the association’s graphic charter and help provide a clear and easily identifiable visual identity.

• Social Media: a reasoned presence on certain social networks:

  • an Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/rxlaboratorio
  • a LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rxlaboratorio
  • a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rxlaboratorio
  • a Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@rxlab

The association’s communications are deployed on these networks in a coordinated manner by Ana Arce.
All the information that’s exclusively adressed to RxLab members, is sent ad hoc to them by e-mail.
It’s expected very soon to create some new RxLab accounts on some more ethical social networks like Pixelfed, Bluesky or PeerTube, and to set up a general Newsletter to send updates from time to time to all the community of users.

• General chat : on chat.rxlab.io, the association proposes a place to exchange with the community in general and particular to its members (the community dimension being part of the benefits offered by the membership). The Discord server used to be the preferred channel of discussion, but we’ve recently migrated to a Zulip server following the structural commitments of the association on freedom and openness.

Print Communication

To support the association’s presence at festivals, trade fairs, or any face-to-face event, the committee has chosen to develop printed communication supports, which are not too expensive and follow the ecological and sobriety preoccupations, stated in the association’s principles.
A5 Flyers, a few posters, some stickers and a kakemono have been printed to be displayed during these events.

Coordination

The association’s communication strategy and its online presence are quite fluid, carried out according to the occasions, digital events and the release of updates or the publication of the tools developed or hosted by the association.
The public relations committee is coordinated online and according to the availability and good will of each person.
We hope to count with more people to continue improving and increasing the communications and the creation of more visual elements.

Committee report by Nicolas Dufresne

From the founding of the association RxLaboratorio until the annual general assembly of 2026.

Website

The foundation of the association required the development of a new platform to present its activities and for content distribution.

This new platform was entirely developped by Nicolas Dufresne using WordPress as a basis, and is now available on rxlaboratorio.org.

The theme is a deeply customized Twenty Twenty-Five theme from WordPress.

Many plug-ins for WordPress were developed to fill the needs with the association, written in PHP:

• RxLab Authors is used to manage the authors of the content the association distributes (public profile, statistics, financial accounting…)
• RxLab Downloads handles all the downloadable content (public access, data privacy, statistics…)
• RxLab GDPR is a small tool to display our privacy policy and let the user accept technical cookies.
• RxLab Memberships helps the management of all the members of the association (fees, status…)
• RxLab Software Distribution handles the distribution of our tools (statistics, downloads, updates and versioning…)
• RxLab Tutorials handles the distribution of our tutorials (statistics, video streaming, piracy protection, sells and accounting…)
• Other plugins have been developed to automate as much as possible our financial accounting and online shop; they’re connected to the WooCommerce plugin and our accouting software.
• Assembly-Polls is our most recent plugin, which allows the members of the association to vote online for the motions for resolutions before our general assemblies.

Code and legal text repositories

We’ve created an organization on Codeberg and a few repositories to store our software, WordPress plugins, and legal texts (Statutes, Rules and Regulations, etc.)

Web Hosting

We’ve handled the technical aspects for all our online services and web hosting (DNS, emails, databases, etc) with OVHCloud.