France and Germany have announced an open source collaboration tool called Docs. Its description says that Docs was designed to be a secure alternative to Notion, Outline or Confluence.
Well, that definitely applies to Microsoft 365, and Google Docs, because they are the big players on the field.
Docs was developed as a joint initiative by France’s Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM), and Germany’s Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS). Open source tools like Docs will allow users, and businesses to move away from paid services. This may just be the start of many such services. The EuroStack report highlighted the importance of building an independent digital ecosystem for Europe, to address dependencies on foreign technologies and fostering innovation.
Now, you may wonder, what’s with the generic name? Docs, surely they could have done better there. Well, that’s because Docs isn’t just a product, it is a collaborative text editor which is part of a suite which is called “La suite numérique”, you can check the website here to learn more about it. It also has its own GitHub page with repositories for each tool.
Docs will allow users to edit documents and export them into various formats including DOC, ODT, and PDF. It supports markdown, various block types, slash commands, etc. Editors can collaborate on a document in real time. The best part is that you can keep editing the document when you are offline, and your edits will be synced when you’re back online. You can also share documents that you have created using the platform.
And like many modern programs, Docs also has some AI-powered features, these are called AI Actions and allow you to generate content, sum up, correct or translate text.
Docs is built on top of Django Rest Framework, Next.js, BlockNote.js, HocusPocus and Yjs. As a matter of fact, they are also the sponsors of BlockNote and Yjs. The tool uses the MIT license.
You can sign in to Docs using your FranceConnect account. There is a demo page that you can test by signing in using your web browser. Just head over to the official GitHub, scroll down to the getting started section, and you will find the credentials you need to test the app. It has a fairly simple interface, and is quite user-friendly. You can also see the documents that were created by other users in this test environment.
While it is designed as an online collaboration tool, you can download Docs and self-host it if you want to, but keep in mind it’s still a work-in-progress. But, if an offline office suite is what you want, there is a better option, LibreOffice. It is also free, open source, and supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Did you know that it is also used by Governments? As noted by HowToGeek, Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany, switched from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice last year. And they also migrated over 30,000 PCs from Windows to Linux. A lot of people will be doing that later this year, when Windows 10 reaches its end-of-life support date.
“Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany, switched from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice last year. And they also migrated over 30,000 PCs from Windows to Linux. A lot of people will be doing that later this year, when Windows 10 reaches its end-of-life support date.”
Time will tell on the above; the last time the experiment with Linux was tried was over five years ago. Linux has improved, but it was a disaster for the EU governments and schools who tried it.
Docs–time will tell on that one as well; sounds a bit like Etherpad. Not sure why people like to reinvent the wheel. Compare costs. I’ve usually found running one’s own server and coding one’s own program takes more time and money than it’s worth.
https://etherpad.org/
I agree completely. They are reinventing the wheel when alternatives are freely available. The only “advantage” of government proprietary software is control of the data.
And as I said before, there is no difference for consumer who controls the data when your choices are Google or the local Government. In a lot of cases, I personally would prefer Google. The worst Google can do is to sell my personal information for profit. The worst local Government can do is put me in jail for memes (If I lived in Germany).
The problem here is that once AI gets involved in the game, privacy largely disappears. Github is owned by Microsoft and as we all know Microsoft is closed source even though Github maintains that it is in fact open-source.
According to Techcrunch, there are still thousands of Github repositories which are now supposedly private, but which can be accessed by Copilot. https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/26/thousands-of-exposed-github-repositories-now-private-can-still-be-accessed-through-copilot/
Also, since Microsoft is the registered owner of Github there’s nothing to prevent them selling it on to Google and although that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon the possiblility remains that it could be acquired by another conglomerate with less interest in users privacy.