Calligra and LibreOffice already exist though. I am not against this in principle but couldn’t they have invested in an existing FOSS project?
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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While both of those are great software. Unless I'm not aware of something they aren't cloud/network based office suites like Google docs and office 365.
It seems this is an alternative to office software where you can work simultaneously and share documents in the same cloud/network.
I don't think there is an alternative to office 365 and Google docs at this point that is open source. So this seems like a great project and I'll definitely be considering it for our company.
There is nextcloud and others you can self host at least.
What about Collabora Online? It integrates nicely into Nextcloud, but I am not sure about pricing for business use.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/collabora-online/
Guide for self hosting: https://collabora-online-for-nextcloud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install/
Thanks I'll definitely check that out. I've seen some posts about it working on Synology Nas devices so that's very interesting.
There's onlyoffice for cloud based office
Can either of those do collaborative editing? I usually think of that feature when I think of Google Docs
Really glad to see the EU adopt more open source software as a way to combat the centralized control some of the american software companies have over the space.
If I can copy and paste with thought having to install the offline plugin, then I'm in.
What does this do over what the collabora tools in Nextcloud do?
Dont know why we need another foss office but im certainly not going to complain.
As someone in and from the US, good. Private companies are far to prevalent in public institutions all over the world. Something as basic and fundamental as word processing should not be controlled by a small select few huge international companies.
It's just for the French civil service, right?
Is this just for EU citisens or can Americans like me use it?
Foss, just deploy and enjoy
Don't know what a Foss is
I was going to make a joke but honestly it's refreshing and a good sign that Lemmy is starting to get used by people who don't know what FOSS means now. Welcome.
Nice to see Lemmy is not just a place for complete nerds!
FOSS is free and open-source software. In simple terms, it is any program for which the source code (i.e. the actual code that forms the program, its entire backbone) is available for anyone to see and modify as they see fit, without any technical or legal limitations.
This is normally seen as very positive, because everyone with the knowledge of respective programming languages can inspect the program to see it doesn't do anything malicious, and everyone can change the program to their needs. Also, the original creator of the program does not have power to put any limitations on its use, like introducing payment requirements, or deleting important features, because everyone can immediately spawn a version of the program that doesn't have these changes, while still having the rest.
In case you didn't understood by now, it's free open source software
FOSS (free and open source software) is software that is completely open source and is free for everyone to use. It's much harder to enshittify, and if it ever does people can fork (make a copy, and make their own changes to the software).
free and open source software
Free open source software
It looks closer to the markdown style of formatting though, and I doubt it has page formatting, or other more advanced formatting, or extensions, or a large selection of fonts. Honestly, even though docs has pageless formatting now, most people don't use it when they should, making everything unnecessary harder to read, so this will be better in that regard at least. This is probably good enough for 95% of what people use Docs for, but I wouldn't call it a replacement.
I haven't used it because I don't have a French government account, so correct me if I'm wrong about any of that.
We should actually use an opensource, decentralized and private alternative instead of relying on another centralized service
See Fileverse for example: https://fileverse.io/
Why distributed? Having your data tied to a blockchain seems unnecessarily complicated, and it essentially puts your data at risk if the bulk of the community moves to the next hot thing.
We really need to decouple storage from the apps themselves. Whether you use distributed storage, local storage, or something commercially backed like S3 should be a choice separate from the app you use to view and edit your data.
I self-host Collabora (online version of LibreOffice; OnlyOffice is another option), and my data lives on my NAS, but it could just as easily live on S3 or some distributed data store.
I self-host Collabora (online version of LibreOffice; OnlyOffice is another option), and my data lives on my NAS, but it could just as easily live on S3 or some distributed data store.
Oh this is interesting. Any pitfalls you could talk about before I go popping this up myself?
It's pretty easy if you use NextCloud with the AIO image, but if you're doing anything fancier than that, strap in because there aren't many decent tutorials.
(Not op) Its distrubuted so you don't lose your content if something happens to one location.
Just browsing the landing page, it looks like the blockchain part offers proof of ownership and strict access controls without having to use a centralized service, which is needed in some form if it's distrubuted.
I imagine but haven't seen that it might handle payments for having things be distrubuted as well, which would have meant having to include credit cards otherwise which would complicate things like micro payments to any given person hosting your content.
Edit: also this is the kind of thing that should use an S3 compatible API so you don't get locked in as you said. It'd let you move the data between providers effortlessly.
Its distrubuted so you don’t lose your content if something happens to one location.
Right, but you'll lose your content if enough people lose interest in the network. That's absolutely a thing in the crypto world where things move fast. Relying on the network effect to secure your data sounds... sketchy.
which is needed in some form if it’s distrubuted
Sure, and the easiest way to do that is w/ public key cryptography, sign your encrypted stuff and you can always prove ownership. A blockchain gives you that, but it's hardly necessary to have consensus around that.
include credit cards
It probably uses some cryptocurrency. Lots of cryptocurrencies work well for micropayments (e.g. LiteCoin, Monero, or even Bitcoin w/ the lightning network).
I just don't see the need for a blockchain here. Bittorrent has been doing content-based addressing for ages, and it doesn't need a blockchain, you just ask for the data at a given hash and you get it. Or you can use IPFS. If everything is properly encrypted, you're good to go!
What the blockchain does offer is a way to pay for storage. So the more you pay, the more likely your data is to still be there after some time as people leave the network and nodes drop and whatnot. All in all though, it seems really risky to put anything important on it, and you might as well just pay for a storage provider from a legal entity that you can sue if things go poorly (and maybe two, so you're not screwed if goes bankrupt or whatever).
I was looking at it more, and it does use IPFS for the data storage (files and the collaboration chats etc), as well as Arweave, which I'd never heard of until today.
Checked out the site on mobile, and it was unresponsive to any of my clicks.
Well this software is more intended for administrative staff working for the government, so I don't think that decentralisation is their goal here.
I agree but having two major countries using this might be a good move for more efforts from nations. I know Canada still uses all M$FT platforms and recently moved to EXO.
Purpose built projects like this would be easy for public servants to adopt and adapt their workflow.
I wish we did with more open source and local software.
My school in Canada has some agreement with Microsoft so we have to use everything from them.
The school mail used for all accounts is hosted by outlook
The databases are all azure
The 2fa app on our phone to boot the school computer has to be Microsoft (even gave me shit because I am root...)
Teams
We had a whole course for a year on how to use word.
It's a public school. Obviously with this most students will move to the USA for higher pay, we are literally subsidizing the USA education.
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No America's club
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