France's homegrown open source online office suite • Hacker News Board

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#351

Post by Kailhus » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

jonathanstrange wrote: post #141

GuB-42 wrote: post #71

On this topic, I think it is worth mentioning Framasoft [1] It is a French organization that offers plenty of alternatives to Google and other big tech products. A lot of them are just rebranded and hosted open source software, but they also develop their own, such as PeerTube and Framaprout (the last one is a joke, but PeerTube isn't). [1] https://framasoft.org/

I hate to say it because it's cute but that website is not going to win over large companies to use these tools.

The arts look a lot like Ankama work https://www.ankama.com

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#352

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 7:41 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #342

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just repeating your assumptions - "taxpayer-funded state-developed is bad", but "marketplace competitively" good. I'm not convinced. You're not engaging with the sovereignty aspect - "compete globally" isn't the main goal at all as I said above, you're just restating you misconception. And so this part comes across as pure projection: > You seem to be arguing for the sake of argument while avoiding the substan…

How does this help sovereignty? Yes in the most basic sense it does since they build their own tool instead of getting a foreign one. To be a little bit provocative I could say that Warsaw Pact countries used to do the same and built plenty of uncompetitive products themselves... But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not h…

> But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not help competitiveness,

"It's not as plan because it doesn't.." (describes thing that isn't a goal of the plan). This is nonsensical. Not even wrong. This is the entire point.

> Again, the sovereignty aspect means all of this (develop its own industry and economy) must be addressed

No, you simply are not understanding "data sovereignty and security" at all.

> a huge cost for very little.

Citation needed. You assume the costs are "huge" and I am not convinced at all - as others have noted there are existing open-source libraries to underpin this now. Likewise the small size of benefits is your unfounded assumption. Security benefits are not measured in money on a stock market.

Many government functions such as standing armies in peacetime are actual "huge costs". But they have benefits not measured in money on a stock market. It's an incorrect framing in that case too.

You're just repeating misconceptions.

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#353

Post by pkd249 » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 8:09 AM UTC

okanat wrote: post #26

Okay this is nowhere near an "Office suite". It is a cloud collaboration suite with a glorified markdown editor and with some extra utilities around. Almost nobody buys stuff like Google Docs and Microsoft Office for this reason. From my experience using open-source collaboration groupware like Nextcloud, their solutions written in dynamic programming languages like PHP and Python are always woefully slow. Only thing…

> industrial espionage claims

?? this is not true, please provide a source

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#354

Post by mytailorisrich » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 8:59 AM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #352

mytailorisrich wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this help sovereignty? Yes in the most basic sense it does since they build their own tool instead of getting a foreign one. To be a little bit provocative I could say that Warsaw Pact countries used to do the same and built plenty of uncompetitive products themselves... But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not h…

> But beyond that it isn't a plan because it does not scale, it does not help the country develop its own industry and economy, it does not help competitiveness, "It's not as plan because it doesn't.." (describes thing that isn't a goal of the plan). This is nonsensical. Not even wrong. This is the entire point. > Again, the sovereignty aspect means all of this (develop its own industry and economy) must be addressed…

OK, so you are not willing to engage or discuss but you just want to snipe at me, as I thought. I tried. Good day.

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#355

Post by ffsm8 » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 8:59 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #350

ffsm8 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, you don't need the model abstraction for any software, ever. It is just more or less suited for a domain. And in this case, as would be obvious from thinking about it, the only part it's not suited for is the live syncing of the text edit on the frontend, which is one one small part of the whole.

Storing the text documents themselves in a relational database is itself a terrible idea.

It's not a bad idea, generally. it depends on the implementation. If you're updating it multiple times per second, then yes, it's a bad idea.

Now go check if they're doing it or you're just suggesting from the dunning kruger symptom.

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#356

Post by sehansen » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #222

savant2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: why do you consider it to be nowhere near an "Office suite"? It seems to me it fits the definition given by Wikipedia [1]. I guess it is less advanced than Google Workspace or Microsoft Office but it would cover all of my needs at work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_software#Office_s...

If you scroll a little further down, you'll see that it lists components of an office suite as: - a word processor - a spreadsheet application - presentation software This doesn't look like it has any of these

It has two out of the three:

- Word processor: https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs

- Spreadsheet: https://github.com/suitenumerique/calc

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#357

Post by deaux » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

mzi wrote: post #319

deaux wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does getting these roles require French citizenship? Asking for a friend ;)

To work in French civil service (as a fonctionnaire ) you need to be a EU/EEA citizen but not necessarily French.

Interesting. Have you ever seen a non-French(/Walloon/Monegasque/French Swiss) person work in French civil service?

I could see there being.. biases that make it much harder in practice. Not particular to France, but anywhere in Europe.

My friend might just start brushing up on their French.

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#358

Post by lucb1e » Mon, Feb 09, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #332

lucb1e wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Element web and mobile have the same issue; server I'm not sure, where can I see this? I would assume the default/reference implementation but I don't know Groups work btw, it's just private chats that cannot be initiated from either side (I have like five pending 'rooms' or something now), so it's not that one server banned the other. I just took it for typical matrix experience

it sounds like the hackspace server has been banned from inviting due to spam or something. can you share the name of the server so we can check? or mail abuse@matrix.org with the details.

It's not my server and not actually that much involved in the space, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to email you guys about their system, but I'll mention this in the group chat. Thank you!

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#359

Post by Normal_gaussian » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 11:50 AM UTC

forty wrote: post #324

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The project benefits from the visibilityband community of GitHub and GitHub is completely replaceable with European hosted or self-hostable options should something untoward happen.

I think you and other responders are missing the point. Yes GitHub gives visibility to the project and is easily replaceable. But putting projects on GitHub gives visibility to GitHub and reenforces the network effect and Microsoft leadership, making it harder for European alternative to emerge.

I'm sure they would use a European provider if it was only a minor inconvenience to them; but there is no EU-github nearly done and it doesn't make sense to hamstring this project waiting on it. If this project is successful it will help to justify funding more EU sovereign projects, which will likely include GitHub replacements.

Re: France's homegrown open source online office suite

#360

Post by seec » Tue, Feb 10, 2026, 3:35 PM UTC

okanat wrote: post #26

Okay this is nowhere near an "Office suite". It is a cloud collaboration suite with a glorified markdown editor and with some extra utilities around. Almost nobody buys stuff like Google Docs and Microsoft Office for this reason. From my experience using open-source collaboration groupware like Nextcloud, their solutions written in dynamic programming languages like PHP and Python are always woefully slow. Only thing…

Couldn't agree more.

I always laugh my ass off when people cry about Microsoft and Office. Well, the thing is that there are no real competitors, and we can't blame them if everyone else is more incompetent than they are.

Apple has been pretending to work on an alternative for years, and it is still nowhere near as powerful/good.

But we live in a feminized world, where it is profitable to virtue signal by siding with the pretend victims even though they are not any better than the winners and, in fact, just as bad, as Apple routinely demonstrates.