Comment by input_sh
7 hours ago
Worth pointing out: France is not adopting existing open source software, they're building their own software and releasing it under the MIT licence. Most of it (or all of it?) is Django backend + React frontend (using a custom-built UI kit).
Home page for the entire suite (in French) with some screenshots: https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/
Code bases are on GitHub and they use English there: https://github.com/suitenumerique/
Dev handbook (in English): https://suitenumerique.gitbook.io/handbook
Not French and I can't say I personally tried deploying any of them, but I've been admiring their efforts from afar for a while now.
I work at Grist, the "tableur collaboratif" (collaborative spreadsheet) listed on the La Suite homepage. We're in the interesting situation of being both a NYC-based company, and open source software the French gov has adopted and is helping to develop. Grist is mostly a node backend. So it is a complicated story. The key is having code the gov can review and trust and run it on sovereign infrastructure.
Grist https://www.getgrist.com/
A write-up of how the French gov uses it https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...
Your position is fantastic because it immediately puts to death all of that nationalistic nonsense about the EU becoming "anti-American" by enforcing privacy laws on US Big Tech etc, when in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin. I might be naive, but your company to me represents a win for free/open software and cross-country collaboration.
That being said, I should ask: to what extent do you see being US-based an advantage or a problem in the current state of things? For example, in regards to exports controls, or any other such thing that may potentially limit your business scope depending on $current_admin.
wow it reminds me of Microsoft Access, a great piece of software in terms of rapidly building an application!
Does grist have forms?
Form support is touted on the homepage: https://www.getgrist.com/forms/
For what it's worth, which isn't much because this is probably outdated: I remember trying grist a few years ago and leaving mildly unimpressed with form support (I think because I was hoping to have image upload in the forms and that wasn't supported yet).
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I'm not an MS dev type, but I've often seen these forms questions. What made their forms so easy, or more in general what is so complicated about forms that this was even a tool so many liked?
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If you want forms try https://visualdb.com/ it is another tool that aims to be Microsoft Access
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Kudos, Grist is great ! Super features, quite seamless only the UI could be more modern (or user stylesheet customizable) if you get to it.
Thanks! Fair about styling :). You can bring your own stylesheet https://support.getgrist.com/self-managed/#how-do-i-customiz...
I've been using the docs tool in my homelab for ~3 months now as a knowledge base for some projects I've been working on with some friends.
It's really good. The typing experience "feels" right and the collaboration features work. I haven't played with the other solutions yet but I'm very excited if they are up to the same standard.
I deployed it with docker and it was relatively smooth. I had to play a bit with the OIDC but I'm pretty sure that was more a me issue than anything.
I am certainly not going to complain about more well-funded FOSS software being out there.
Hmmm not entirely true. The text chat of their suite is simply element.io (matrix) and they're paying them for development.
Visio does seem built from scratch but I wonder if it's a temporary thing until element is feature complete with their move away from Jitsi.
You can find more about la suite on their website and the opendesk one (German project using mostly the same software). Unfortunately I don't have the links to hand here.
Tchap (the chat part of the suite) is indeed a fork of Element. Unfortunately they haven't funded upstream development for many years (otherwise both Element and Tchap would be much much better!)
Visio (aka meet) began in parallel with Element's work on MatrixRTC and Element Call. Hopefully the two can converge, given they are both built on LiveKit.
We do support the foundation: https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/espace-presse/dinum-...
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It really has been a huge disappointment the extent to which governments using open source projects for mission critical work go out of their way to avoid financially supporting them.
How much better could open source alternatives to Teams be in this moment if only 1% of what Europe paid Microsoft for Teams went to investing in open alternatives?
It boggles the mind as to why they choose a name for this application that is very clearly a Microsoft trademark.
In understand it's also the French word for Videoconferencing, but even still...
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> Code bases are on GitHub
Not a very solid way to move away from American big tech :/
If the move away from American big tech is for practical reasons rather than political, there is no harm in using GitHub. The worry with using an American firm is that the US government could force the company to handover confidential information, or shut down access.
For open source code, there is no risk of confidential information being given to the US government (since there is no confidential information), and moving to another forge would be pretty simple if necessary.
The other commenter nailed it down. But I want to add that removing dependance on US companies is not some kind of spiteful act. It's purely down to both privacy and reliability.
Having private companies in the US becoming more involved with politics is fine for the US apperantly, but the EU just don't want to be involved.
Open standards, private software is the way to go. It makes sense for any entity to control their own destiny.
As if EU doesn’t involve itself with software, policy and censorship which has its own inherent risks
Maybe they have local copies as well, and just figured they might as well take GitHub’s free bandwidth and social networking features.
Next year: LeGit !
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Exactly, we do have private forges we build and deploy from.
This is probably just the first big step (communications) in a series of big steps.
React is also from US, no?
I remember seeing some projects by the French government on their self-hosted Gitlab. Maybe these are just public mirrors of their private repos?
Refreshing and impressive indeed. I wish other governments did this, esp those that are larger / have a reasonably large tech scene (e.g. Northern Europe, Nordic, AUS, Japan, Canada, Germany, India, etc).
It's time governments realize(d) that IT sector is as strategic as the Defense sector, which is usually/always given preferential treatment (e.g. Airbus, etc) and that they don;t have to be beholden to American tech behemoths. If this realization happened ~20 years ago, they might have stopped FB, Goog, Amazon, MSFT, etc. much earlier, and wouldn't be hand-wringing now trying to stop or delay the evil effects of social media.
I am pleased that AUS has banned social media for teens < 16yrs, and perhaps Finland is thinking the same route.
Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.
> Already, China, Russia have their local tech companies supply their critical infra needs. Other governments should be wise enough to catch up, and not just to support + enhance local languages but to grow their critical ecosystem.
As a European, I agree. Zooming out a little, though, this whole decoupling process of entire economies (which has been well underway for a while) is going to increase the probability of armed conflict as the repercussions of military engagement will be lower.
I agree with this totally. But while they certainly talk the talk I’m not totally convinced that European governments will actually walk the walk and follow through on this.
To me a really significant signal that they’re serious will be when there’s an official Linux version of Solidworks.
It’s remarkable to me that France has control over one of the premiere CAD suites but theyre entirely dependent on an American OS to use it.
Why would a private company deciding to release a Linux version of their product signal a government's follow-through? As far as I can tell, there is no current connection between Solidworks and the French government.
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Germany has https://www.opendesk.eu/de and https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund. both mentioned on HN
Have Germany supplanted office for these alternatives?
It’s super cool they exist, if they’re not used… I mean, it’s still super cool they exist?
Well I would definitely prefer to use globally popular established solutions like Zoom and Teams and the English language and America as a reliable democracy.
Weather or not they get Greenland, Trump and his supporters in the US administration have changed the world. Guy should definitely get Nobel prize for pushing decentralization.
Completely confused about which parts are sarcasm. Pretty sure the last sentence is and by this the rest must be as well. But oh boy in what kind of world do we live where you seriously can't tell easily anymore.
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Here's what I gathered:
- TChap - Group chat (looks like Slack / Discord)
- Visio - Video meetings
- FranceTransfert - File Transfer
- Messagerie - Email client
- Fichiers - Cloud file storage
- Docs
- Grist - Spreadsheet
Looking through the resources you've linked is one of the most hopeful and awesome software experiences I have had in a while.
There's a chance to unlock tremendous value for society here.
Imagine if you could fix all the awful bugs making video conferencing software shitty for you! It's perhaps the most bug-plagued software out there in the world, with the highest number of complaints I have ever seen.
We've had a large detour away from open-source running the core of the internet, at least outside of web pages, but this sort of software feels like we're getting back to the 90's and earlier.
Vive la France!
Zoom isn't buggy I wouldn't say. It's really good.
That's been my personal experience, but colleagues on Linux are continually fighting it.
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This one made me laugh , thanks ! I wish there was some kind of slashdot like ´funny’ tag
Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy.
Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French, and invite collaboration from the other large EU countries. I wonder how many Dutch or German will think of "La Suite Numerique" as an EU-wide office suite.
That website is specifically to explain it to French audiences.
German version is here, but unlike France they're mostly boosting already-existing German open source software (like Nextcloud and Open Xchange): https://opencode.de/en/home
I don't know how the Netherlands really fits into all of this, but I know they're one of the biggest funders of open source projects in general via NLnet. Seriously, their list of projects they've given money to is ridiculously comprehensive, you're going to struggle naming some that are not listed here: https://nlnet.nl/project/index.html
je maintiendrai!
> Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy.
Why not? Plenty of French people speak English at a native level.
As a francophone, I can tell you that the vast majority doesn't.
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Is there not a FOSS solution like this already that they could just deploy?
I mean if they're half as good as Handbrake and VLC I'm up for trying
I like how they go to digital sovereignty on office. And then immediately turn around an host on Github.
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0% chance of working out
> Used each month by more than 500 000 staff, in 15 ministries and many administrations.
Right. Just like edge is used on 100% of windows
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