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...

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.

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

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.

> Code bases are on GitHub

Not a very solid way to move away from American big tech :/

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.

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!

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.

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