Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 484 posts

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#411

Post by samtuke »

Love the concept, but if the core developers don't rely on direct relationships with non-government customers, then I assume this software is unlikely to meet my needs as a startup founder (or the need of most other readers here on HN).

Governments make perverse customers with needs and incentives that don't align with other regular users and customers, in my experience. So the lack of a paid hosted version of Docs is concerning to me in terms of their priorities, quality, and the future product focus of this otherwise promising (and much needed) app.

Tldr: being customer-focused and having a product led organizational culture is unlikely if you're building for government.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#412

Post by virdev »

cyberpunkdyst wrote: post #390
virdev wrote: post #296

Hey everyone! I'm the PM working with the Docs team. Thanks a lot for the kind words, we're as excited as you to be working on such a cool project. We didn't expect to get posted so soon on HN. We still have a lot to do in terms documentation and reusability. But we'll be working a lot on that next week. We'll keep you posted here. Again thank you everyone!

Did you consider building on top of some existing open source solutions like Docmost, Appflowy, or AFFiNE?

Hey, we dedided to take an approach where we build on top of libraries like BlockNotejs, Yjs, HocusPocus but build our own wrapper around it in Django and Next.js. This allows to iterate really fast and to catter our own need (we are large organizations we don't have the same as startups or SMEs). Contributing and sponsoring allows us to make improvement that help the whole collaborative software category.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#413

Post by amai »

theflash666 wrote: post #257
amai wrote: post #243

Which format are they using to write/store the notes? Is it another Markdown dialect?

It's based on https://www.blocknotejs.org/

And this again is based on prosemirror. So for better math support you would have the option of using https://benrbray.com/prosemirror-math/ .

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#414

Post by Lutger »

johndhi wrote: post #19
nchagnet wrote: post #6

This is a really great project from both the French and German governments. I think state-funded open source solutions to digital platforms is a fantastic opportunity to get away from the big tech walled gardens. Of course, there is always the risk that this becomes unmaintained in the future, but the community at least can take over. But until then, it's a nice platform and a nice contribution to the community.

I haven't thought about this a ton - but am I wrong that it sounds crazy and inefficient for the government to essentially compete with private industry? It feels like a colliding of worlds and a cannibalization that doesn't make sense to me. Like - if the government launched a messaging app competitive with WhatsApp and it drew users away from WhatsApp and it had better encryption ... Would that actually be better f…

It doesn't need to compete, not really. There are many bodies of government. National governments, local, state wide, and from many different countries. These all need software, often doing more or less the same. If they would pool their resources to pay development of useful software, theoretically it could overcome a tragedy of the commons and create really useful software cheaply. This increases productivity and thus economic growth.

It may compete with private software for a while, but not that much: companies will find a way to add value to existing open source software or create new propositions. Building out the boring and useful foundational stuff collectively will just move the bar on what is exciting and new software, or what are better takes on existing software. Companies will be creatively seeking out ever more complex problems to tackle once the government builds out the basic tooling.

And ideally, that is what private companies should be good at: quick to pivot, creative and innovative problem-solving.

Of course, that requires governments to play nice and enable companies to leverage their tooling too, and - perhaps a bigger problem - take responsibility for competent governance of the most important projects and manage their adoption well.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#415

Post by Lutger »

rtpg wrote: post #34
johndhi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't thought about this a ton - but am I wrong that it sounds crazy and inefficient for the government to essentially compete with private industry? It feels like a colliding of worlds and a cannibalization that doesn't make sense to me. Like - if the government launched a messaging app competitive with WhatsApp and it drew users away from WhatsApp and it had better encryption ... Would that actually be better f…

In a universe where the French government drops a perfect replacement for Notion and causes Notion to go out of business, this is still a net positive for society in the same way that things like Linux existing is a net positive for society. One should not focus on the economic sphere as the be all and end all. We can just have improvements be distributed to everyone sometimes! We can just do good things through coor…

Agree, but rather than farming, I think it will enable developers to focus on more complex and interesting problems. Or spot a need in the market (doesn't have to be complex) and quickly solve new problems people are willing to pay money for.

Outcompeting only works if a software company is truly unable to pivot or outperform open source tools sponsored by the government.

The same thing can be said by free tools given away by big tech, like vscode. Here, microsoft operates actually quite similar to the government. There is no way a new company can create a competitor to vscode and charge money for it anymore. This pushes people to solve other software problems, rather than doing something else entirely. I don't think we'll be at the limit of economic value we can generate by writing new software just yet, if such a thing even exists.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#416

Post by k__ »

berkes wrote: post #407
slowtrek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notion is not an example of delightful software and it is very much one of the most reproducible apps ever. I don't know how they managed to make it fashionable amongst startups, but it's certainly not because it's an innovative product.

> very much one of the most reproducible apps ever. It isn't. The proof is simple: there aren't many reproductions that *tick all the boxes*. And no, "a directory of markdown files" isn't even close, it ticks two, maybe three of the dozens of boxes that notion ticks. Joplin (my daily driver) and obsidian (can't get to like it) are closer, but certainly not there - though these alternatives tick some boxes that notion…

To me, Notion always felt like someone took the concept of a wiki and Jira-fied it.

Crazy how such a simple tool can feel so slow and klunky :/

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#417

Post by vviers »

sylvinus wrote: post #347
andyferris wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a Docs question, but I recently came across Grist and I see that Grist is actually listed as a project under la Suite Numerique. On the other hand, Grist Labs (getgrist.com/about) claim to be the developers, are based in the US (NYC), and I couldn't see any mention any EU collaboration on their website. What is the connection here? How does it differ from the governance and funding model of Docs? I love that you…

AFAIK, there are lots of contributions from developers in the French government to the Grist open source repository. We also deploy it, we have instances running in various government agencies. For Docs, we bootstrapped the repository ourselves on top of Django, Next.js, BlockNote.js, Y.js and many others. We welcome contributions!

Yes, there are lots of PR listed here : https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core/pulls?q=is%3Apr+labe...

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#418

Post by IshKebab »

mrweasel wrote: post #33
bryanhogan wrote: post #16

Does this provide database functionality like seen in Notion? I'm always disappointed by note-taking tools calling themselves a Notion alternative when they do not provide an alternative to Notion and are instead just another note-taking tool with a simple UI. If you want to be a Notion alternative provide the things that make Notion great, e.g. the database functionality. It's okay to be a simple colaborative notes…

It's a little like products that brands themselves as a "Jira replacement". Yes, you got the basic functionality down, but so does a hundred other projects. You're not really dealing with the hard problems or the advanced features. Maybe in the future yes, but a replacement... a potential future replacement maybe.

Tbf Jira's "hard problems" are really things that shouldn't be done in the first place, like the insane configurability. Just ends up in a mess.

The problem with Jira is that it's enterprise software that's put in place by people that don't actually have to use it.

Post reply on HN