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France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

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Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#501
post #48
post #7

so is there any open source alternative to these meeting apps? (selfhostable)

This one is often overlook but very good, I prefer it over Jitsi https://galene.org/

what are the minimal server requirements? jitsi says prefer 8G ram (4G for small meetings) and 4 dedicated cpu cores https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-gu...

The chat seems extremely basic, so not really an alternative if you need chat with e.g. message edit/delete/formatting/pictures as well as video/audio.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#503
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but can you be honest and admit that you don't have any of this yet? Just to take a simple thing like messaging, Europeans mainly use WhatsApp Because it's very hard to compete against monopolies when there are network effects. What you can do is regulate them. The US government has been working very hard in the last decades to prevent that. Recommended: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalit…

"regulate them" has mostly translated to "tax the most successful players in the form of non-compliance fees from byzantine EU regulatory structures". I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software, or the cries that it's unfair that the US doesn't strangle their own tech market with equally burdensome regulation. The problem Eu…

> I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software

"Encouraging allies" is a pretty damn generous interpretation of it.

Regarding what's "holding back Europe's tech market", I think that Europe has a different culture. Not having big monopolies is a feature, not a bug. In that sense, the regulations don't fail.

But it is very difficult to compete with monopolies unless you become one and lock your position. If the regulations prevent that (and again, that's a feature), then it becomes impossible.

Trying an analogy:

If we impose strict animal welfare rules on our own chicken farmers, that's a feature. But if we then allow unlimited imports of cheaper chicken raised with no such rules, it becomes unfair to our farmers, doesn't it?

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#504
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not, but EU tech companies have to compete against US monopolies. And there are laws that prevent them from doing that. https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

This blog post starts off with a long-winded, meandering rant. Do you have something more succinct and less rant-y to back up your assertion of > And there are laws that prevent them from doing that. ?

This blog is written by Cory Doctorow. Whether you agree with it or not, I think it's worth going to the end :-).

It's a long transcript, I would recommend watching/listening to the video.

> And there are laws that prevent them from doing that.

Better explained by Cory Doctorow, see link above.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#505
post #309

Refreshing. No more Teams? Sounds like a dream... Of all the crapware I am forced to work with, Teams really pushes the envelope in every single negative way conceivable. I think I have more love for SharePoint than Teams, and that is a massive concession.

I've had to start using Teams more lately and it is indeed as terrible as I'd heard. The other day I needed to copy a number of items from an ongoing chat. Seems like an extremely simple and normal thing, but every time I hover over a message a popup jumps up with emoji reactions that partially covers the text I'm trying to copy. Trying to move quickly, I kept accidentally "reacting" to messages instead of double cli…

What are the downsides of Discord?

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#506
Zoom and teams are low hanging fruit in terms of replacability. I use both with various customers. Internally we use teams. Occasionally somebody insists on webex or other tools. Meets isn't actually horrible now that Google seems to have stopped the internal battles to replace it every six months. But in the end it is very replaceable as well.

All of these tools cover the basics (being able to video call others, screen sharing, doing calls with multiple/many participants, chat, etc.). You can get most/all of that with free and OSS options. You might struggle a bit with larger meetings or some corporate networking situations.

UX wise, all of these tools are a bit challenged. It seems Google at least embraces the whole "it's just a browser app and that's fine" more than others that insist standalone applications are the way to go. And since these applications are effectively electron applications that run mostly fine in a browser, it is a bit of a smoke and mirrors thing in any case. Bloated is a word that is used frequently in relation to these apps.

It would be nice if tools like this could rally around federated solutions and open protocols. Actually, the smart thing for France (and other countries that care about ending the miserable status quo) would be to dictate usage of open protocols, identity, and security standards. You are welcome to connect with zoom, teams, meets and whatever as long as people not paying for those tools can still participate in a call using whatever compatible tool they prefer. Give these tools a chance to adapt and compete on features. The solution maybe isn't another app but just forcing this market out of the stone age of moats, "owning" user identities, etc.

Email is the one that got away before Silicon Valley got its act together. MS, Novel, America Online, and others completely failed to get their grubby fingers on the space before email was so widely used that not supporting full interoperability with non proprietary email servers was economical suicide. And they tried really hard. Video calls should be the same. And calendars. And word processors (a space that hasn't had any meaningful innovation in decades), spreadsheets, and all the rest. Most of MS Office is a commodity at this point. Not particularly good at anything it does actually. MS has been moving deck chairs around on the deck of that sinking ship for a few decades now.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#507

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/suit…

I work on BlockNote (https://www.blocknotejs.org), the block-based editor that powers Docs (https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs).

1.5 year ago DINUM (La Suite) and OpenDesk (Germany) reached out and started sponsoring quite a bit of our work which has really helped us accelerate the project

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#508
post #198

There seems to be a huge business opportunity in Europe right now, to sell support and customization of open source software to government players. Has anyone heard about a European company that’s been successful in this area?

That seems to be the intention of https://mosa.cloud/

> Pricing starts at €199/month based on resource usage. We'll discuss your specific needs during onboarding.

Out of the question for very small teams; very hard to evaluate with no free/cheap option.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#509

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/suit…

> France is not adopting existing open source software As a Frenchman, this stings. I have been working since 2017 in creating an open source alternative to Dropbox ( https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash ), the reality is out of 60 customers, only 2 are French and most contacts I've had with French entities only shown interest onto open source because they were not willing to spend a dime on anything. Custome…

Is your filestash.eu website intentionally only in French?

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France is not adopting existing open source software As a Frenchman, this stings. I have been working since 2017 in creating an open source alternative to Dropbox ( https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash ), the reality is out of 60 customers, only 2 are French and most contacts I've had with French entities only shown interest onto open source because they were not willing to spend a dime on anything. Custome…

Is your filestash.eu website intentionally only in French?

Yes, the international website is: https://www.filestash.app/
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