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Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline
- tagedcat 2y ago[dead]
- ksajadi 2y ago[flagged]
- jsiepkes 2y ago> Having had to deal many EU regulations and see their negative impact on small businesses for no sizeable beneficial outcome to the average EU citizen Because you didn't give any concrete examples the fact you couldn't see any "sizeable beneficial outcome to the average EU citizen" could easily be because of your own ignorance as far as I'm concerned.
- sebstefan 2y agoTheir thirst to regulate everything and everyone like they did with GDPR and the gatekeeper legislation? The EU has been a massive force of good for consumer rights As a programmer maybe we weren't meant to just be able to have a "thirst" to store "everything and everyone's" data forever. Just implement the GDPR deletion and the data export batch.
- GardenLetter27 2y agoAnd the AI Act with the FLOPs limit? Or the Cybersecurity Act increasing liability for selling software complete with a box-ticking exercise to force money into consultants? Or the DSA creating loads of bureaucracy for "algorithmic" content when almost everything is an algorithm?
- v1ne 2y agoWell, I consider software liability a good thing. Question is how to achieve this goal. Of course it's sad when a bureaucracy answers this with the only means a bureaucracy has: A box-ticking exercise.
- dijit 2y agoWhat's the comparative? The US is restricting nvidias ability to ship GPU's because they're worried about AI. At least the EU's stance is: open, voted on and clear. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/us-govt-restricts-shipments-of-geforce-rtx-4090-to-china-other-countries https://www.tomshardware.com/news/us-govt-restricts-shipment...
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoThis. Most EU regulations are common sense and/or don't apply to small companies. Have a privacy policy, don't collect unnecessary user data, encrypt data properly, don't use cookies to track people outside what is needed for your website to function, and allow your users to access and delete their data. You should have already done that before GDPR, and if you did not, you're the reason we need the law.
- t00 2y agoAgreed about your points, not so much about paper drink straws.
- Tomte 2y ago[flagged]
- sham1 2y ago[flagged]
- diggan 2y agoI kind of despise that too, but in this case it kind of makes sense, the submitted project is a collaboration effort by German and French governments, so talking about various EU governments spending their time and effort on FOSS kind of makes sense, although I also disagree with most of the points parent brought up, FWIW.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thrance 2y ago[flagged]
- coliveira 2y ago[flagged]
- electriclove 2y agoDo you believe this to always have been the case or only since Nov 2024?
- shortsunblack 2y agoAnd United States still has regulations. Chevron doctrine is not a thing in Europe and European institutions do not get captured by NIMBYs when industry wants to build a railroad, a house or an apartment complex. There are no hundreds of governmental organizations demanding you impact assessments and environmental studies. For crying out loud, as an American you cannot work on your own house, since a lot of labour is licensed (electrical work, etc) and taped in red. The regulation Americans talk of in disparaging way is always the regulation that shifts and allows consumer/user surplus.
- mgerdts 2y agoIn the US you can work on your own house, including electrical and plumbing (including natural gas and propane lines, I think). For minor repairs like replacing a switch or receptacle, I don’t think a permit is required. For more substantial changes a permit is generally required and as is an inspection. Supplies for doing all kinds of residential construction work are readily available at retail establishments that normal people visit regularly.
- Imustaskforhelp 2y agoI just believe that regulation should be standardized. Like all my documents can be in this one european locker (I am not sure if it exists) where filing for regulation can be made really really easy. I don't hate regulation , I just hate friction , if we can really remove the maximum amount of friction in regulation as we can without meaningfully removing the purpose of regulation , then we are talking! (I live in India and its called digilocker here , it still has a lot of issues and isn't that useful for corporation but I did hear something about digilocker for corporation regulations as well)
- ykonstant 2y agoIt would be fascinating if it could add LaTeX support!
- yorwba 2y agoIt seems vaguely planned: https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs/issues/724 https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs/issues/724
- tommoor 2y agoOutline has LaTeX fwiw, and is BSL licensed – so you can host it yourself without issue. https://github.com/outline/outline https://github.com/outline/outline
- mgkimsal 2y agoThe closest we get is something like USDS, which then gets hijacked in to DOGE. Open source software built and supported by a national government is inspiring. Are there more examples of this I'm not aware of? I hope so.
- crimsoneer 2y agoI have a scraper that covers open source govtech I keep meaning to tidy up... https://govtech-report.cloud/ https://govtech-report.cloud/
- pcwalton 2y agoGhidra is a fine example from the US government.
- mcintyre1994 2y agoThe UK has Government Digital Services (GDS), which has built and open sourced all the good bits of gov.uk: https://github.com/alphagov https://github.com/alphagov
- microtonal 2y agoOpen source repositories of the Dutch government: https://oss.developer.overheid.nl/repositories https://oss.developer.overheid.nl/repositories
- dopidopHN 2y agoIt’s been happening pretty consistently in France. The cops are rolling their own distro :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu I think it’s wise. Not idea if it’s good
- dzonga 2y agothere was 18f too :(
- nchagnet 2y agoThis 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.
- johndhi 2y agoI 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 for the economy of this country? Something seems off about it to me.
- maelito 2y ago> if the government launched a messaging app competitive with WhatsApp Done, but for public workers. https://tchap.beta.gouv.fr https://tchap.beta.gouv.fr These tools are not yet for citizens, but for workers.
- lloeki 2y agoTchap is based on Matrix for those who wonder and can't read french
- armarr 2y agoBeing dependent on foreign companies is a security issue. The economic value is more subtle and indirect but it is there
- AJ007 2y agoIt's also not a reliable source of funding as some European open source projects have learned.
- rtpg 2y agoHaving both the Notion-like UI and the real time collaboration is exciting! So much stuff has been either/or, and it made it hard for me to find a good alternative. I really appreciate how Notion is basically "what if Google Docs but you can actually organize your information". The collaborative components feel really powerful. I do kind of wish that something that was more ... Wiki-flavored would show up though. I like confluence, it's just mega slow!
- bryanhogan 2y agoWhat about markdown based tools that focused on the linking part, e.g. Haptic or Logseq, is that wiki-flavored enough?
- tommoor 2y agoYou should take a look at Outline (mentioned in the title). https://www.getoutline.com/ https://www.getoutline.com/
- theflash666 2y agoAll features aren't available in the community edition …
- tommoor 2y agoRight, but the vast majority are – include those they are talking about.
- Imustaskforhelp 2y agoWhy am I starting to believe that france is now more culturally shited towards being a new super power in this multi polar world instead of USA. Seriously , I never used to really think about france that much , but Emmanuel Macron correcting trump on live air really made me trust france more as a non US citizen.
- thrance 2y agoThat was funny, but as a Frenchman I don't hold too much hope. Our far right, supporting both Trump and Putin, has been gaining steam with each passing election for the past 20 years. Hopefully the circus currently taking place across the pond is enough to deter some from voting for them, come 2027?
- maelito 2y agoThat's what I hope too. Trump's failure could be our far-right failure to win the 2027 elections.
- eastbound 2y ago[flagged]
- myko 2y agoPutin has always been "for peace" - meaning, give Ukraine to him, and he'll stop trying to take Ukraine over :) (and if he still has war fighting capability left, attack the next country going west in ~5 years)
- thrance 2y agoWhat the fuck are you even talking about? Putin broke his peace treaties 27 times and just refused Ukraine's last one. Russia was the one starting the whole fucking war in the first place. How is CAF funding terrorists and drugs?? Stop spreading nonsense, and please never vote again, seeing how you are completely brainwashed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bryanhogan 2y agoDoes 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 tool, but that is not a Notion alternative.
- maelito 2y agoAs far as I know, the database part is handled by Grist, listed on the suite of tools this note app is part of. https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr Of course, it's not a replacement to Notion yet.
- bryanhogan 2y agoI'm actually not talking about how they handle the database but instead the Database feature of Notion, which is more of a advanced table for the user that can be turned into a Kanban, timeline, calendar, etc. It's one of the main advantages Notion has over other note-taking tools.
- johnecheck 2y agoYup, this is my biggest question too. I'd love to switch to this but I definitely need my relational database features.
- maelito 2y agoSorry, my comment was not clear. The database of La Suite is Grist. Notes is part of La Suite, a broader project. https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr
- mrweasel 2y agoIt'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.
- maelito 2y agoThis tool is part of a WIP complete suite of tools for public agents called "La suite numérique". https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr
- weakfish 2y agoThis is awesome!
- remram 2y agoAh this makes sense, I was going to comment that "docs" was not really a suitable name. What is the correct full name then? lasuite docs (judging from the logo, that seem to be the brand part)? docs numerique (from the URL)?
- maelito 2y agonumerique.gouv is like digital.gov. Kind of a whole ministry. La Suite Docs is better yes.
- Terretta 2y agoThat said, calling the video conferencing capability "Visio" is à la banane.
- theflash666 2y ago"Visio" is French slang for a videoconference meeting. Open to suggestions for a project name that better reflects its purpose and vision.
- moooo99 2y agoI love the effort that is going on here. I'm just curious about some of the efforts taken here. The Docs seems like a good approach to just build it, but really wondering what the motivation behind building another video chat platform was instead of using and improving rather mature OSS solutions like Jitsi.
- chanux 2y agoGives Etherpad vibes!
- ecwilson 2y agoI was going to post this exact same comment. I was obsessed with Etherpad when it came out and to this day, reminisce about it whenever I fire up a Google Doc. Can’t wait to try this.
- bureautards 2y agoyes, make better notes of meetings, make meetings a pleasure, make bureaucracy a dream job
- wiltonn 2y agoOr just stop paying for notion.
- joking 2y agoI like almost everything from this project, even the documentation and development is being done in the open, with design docs like this: https://www.figma.com/design/qdCWR4tTUr7vQSecEjCyqO/DOCS?node-id=7754-20045 https://www.figma.com/design/qdCWR4tTUr7vQSecEjCyqO/DOCS?nod...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- replwoacause 2y agoIt really feels like we are in a time where EU countries are taking front and center on the world stage with cool, progressive and unified stuff, and the US is in the ally snorting crack. Saying this as a disappointed American. But yeah…really cool to see governments collaborating this way.
- Tadpole9181 2y agoIt's not like the US wasn't warned about this repeatedly for decades, and yet we chose this.
- mrweasel 2y agoLooking at how much infrastructure needs to be spun up, I don't really see this as a good solution for personal note taking. If you use the Docker environment, you spin up 10 or more containers... including KeyClock. I get that this is intended to by hosted by a company or an organisation, but plenty of people are using Notion just as individuals. Most people would be better of with Obsidian, Bear, Notion or even Apple Notes.
- johnecheck 2y agoIf we can spin up the 10 containers with a single docker compose command on a $5/month VPS, this really doesn't seem like too much for an individual. And the best part: this is MIT licensed. If it's actually difficult to set up, build a nice web UI that makes it easy and you've got a product.
- mrweasel 2y agoI'm not worried about the cost, you can probably run all of it in the closet on a Raspberry Pi, it's the complexity. What do you do when part of this inevitably fail, how do you get your data back out, where is the data? In Minio, in Postgresql?
- wim 2y agoWe're working on an "IDE for notes/tasks" [1] in the space of Notion and so on where you can easily self-host the sync backend with a single binary. The idea is that you can choose between cloud or self-host (and "eject" at any time to switch between the two if you ever change your mind). We hope that might be a good balance between some companies or individuals wanting to self-host but still making it accessible when you don't know how any of that works, which indeed can get complicated fast. [1] https://thymer.com/ https://thymer.com/
- weakfish 2y agoI’d love to try this out - I signed up for beta access. Looking forward to giving it a shot!
- 2y ago
- dkobia 2y agoI love this. Open source projects often suffer from a combination of a funding crisis and maintainer burnout. I think state funded open source projects are a wonderful idea! By investing in open source projects, governments can create more efficient, transparent, and innovative digital services. If anything I’m sure it’ll save tax payers money on expensive licenses paid to a company in another country.
- kijin 2y agoIt's also about risk management from the government's perspective. You don't want to be beholden to a potentially hostile foreign corporation for tasks as essential as managing your own documents. Compared to how much money they already spend on American SaaS, Investing a few million euros in open-source alternatives could be seen as cheap insurance.
- hirako2000 2y agoOutline is open source.
- theflash666 2y agoFrom my understanding, all features are not open source, for example organization management aren't open-source, which limits its adoption in large institution …
- nylonstrung 2y agoYeah, but BSL license
- crabmusket 2y agoIt's Business Source License https://github.com/outline/outline/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/outline/outline/blob/main/LICENSE
- thor-rodrigues 2y agoI really like the idea of shifting the business model for office software. Instead of the current model—where companies develop a tool, lock users into their ecosystem, and profit by bundling software with hosting and storage—we could move to a model where different providers compete to offer the best deployment solutions. This would foster competition based on factors like pricing, encryption, customer support, server location, and integration flexibility, rather than simply forcing users into long-term subscriptions. That’s why I’m glad to see governments supporting Open Source alternatives to proprietary office software. Paying recurring subscription fees for low-maintenance tools like MS Office feels out of touch—especially when Microsoft once offered a one-time purchase model before shifting to SaaS to maximize profits. This change has made it difficult for individuals and businesses to retain long-term ownership of their tools without being tied to costly and recurring fees. The same trend has played out across the software industry, from design tools like Adobe Creative Cloud (which replaced one-time purchases with a mandatory subscription model) to communication platforms like Slack and Zoom, which lock companies into ongoing costs while limiting interoperability with other solutions.
- bjackman 2y ago> we could move to a model where different providers compete to offer the best deployment solutions. The Matrix project lead talked at FOSDEM about an issue with this model [0]: a pure market approach to this just doesn't offer any way to fund upstream development. Luckily the public sector ought to be a an arena where we can solve this problem by being englightened consumers instead of just buying from the provider that provides the most service per dollar. But that enlightenment does require some education. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/1009932/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1009932/
- maxyurk 2y agoJFrog is doing very well financially with an excellent self-hosted offering
- GraemeMeyer 2y agoMicrosoft still offers one-time purchase for Office by the way - Office 2024 was recently released.
- jjice 2y agoIt feels like notetaking/wiki software have gotten a resurgence in the last few years. Not that it was ever not a thing, but like a new generation of people realized wanted to build new tools for it. Personally, I think the variety of tools is very interesting, and while I like Obsidian and plain markdown file, I do love to see different options in the space with hosted options and different capabilities. Notion feels like it's got this serious range from individuals up to teams at large enterprises. It's incredibly flexible and configurable and I have to assume that's a big part of it, but it was so interesting to watch it eat away at other things like Confluence over the years. My perspective is probably skewed (and I know Confluence and other are probably still massive and dominant), but I'm surprised such a simple concept is getting so much more software. Or actually, that's probably why it's a space with so much software.
- Terretta 2y agoIf you're familiar with the space, ever heard anything that ticks all these boxes: (a) git versioned (b) CRDTs (c) WYSIWYG but Markdown (esp GFM) (d) front matter + markdown able to be SSGd (e) comfortable UI for not-devs (f) native (Swift) MacOS app, else Tauri/Electron self-hosted client+svc (g) if online, OIDC / SAML SSO Appears this can be cobbled leveraging Obsidian plugins, but unstable due to git vs. CRDT issues. And there are a few "CMS" for SSG stacks that almost but not quite meet this.
- dtkav 2y agoDev of the Obsidian Relay plugin [0] here. We support most of this (you'll need to also use Obsidian Git), but haven't released OIDC (please reach out of you need it!). [0] https://system3.md/relay https://system3.md/relay
- trees101 2y agovery interesting, I'm looking for something like this, will check it out. In my obsdian vault, I keep a lot of code snippets and even entire python scripts. Do you see your method as being perhaps an alternative to dedicated github repos for tiny personal projects, replacing a million little repos? And at the same time having notes in the same repo? Have you solved the git repo index problem, Ive found that large vaults cause a problem and require occasional cleanup: ```bash git gc --prune=now # Garbage collection git repack -ad # Repacked objects, optimizing repository storage ```
- yread 2y agoHow does it compare to nextcloud?
- jxf 2y agoI like this! One note: I think the README would also benefit from having a (crowdsourced?) list of providers that offer (or will soon offer) Docs as a hosted offering. Many users of collaborative editing tools aren't sophisticated enough to actually host an instance.
- yujzgzc 2y agoI stopped reading at "AGPL". I appreciate the intent but this stuff is impossible to use in practice. Even governments need partners who would likely be hesitant to run it because of that.
- iamsanteri 2y agoLove this! Would be interesting to know why they chose Django. Will support by giving my upvote!
- mightysashiman 2y agoHow does it compare to Anytype? (less clunky and unintuitive I hope?)
- mightysashiman 2y agoOn the test account: "Error 429: too many requests".
- kjksf 2y ago[flagged]
- kubb 2y agoHow come are you incapable of following trivial instructions to run it locally? This website is called hacker news, not technically challenged user news.
- jtuple 2y agoThere's a hosted test instance with pre-existing test account: https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs?tab=readme-ov-file#test-it https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs?tab=readme-ov-file#te... Logging in just works. Easy to try it out there. The official French hosted instance requiring some French-specific stuff seems pretty normal. Likely specific to that instance's authentication system, not the Docs software itself.
- crazygringo 2y agoI'm intrigued by the decision to call it "Docs". In any other circumstance it would be a clear trademark infringement on Google Docs. It's literally the same product with the same name, it has an extremely similar logo and almost exactly the same typeface in its logo. But since this is a government project between France and Germany, maybe governments are allowed to ignore trademarks? Or Google wants to stay on their good side because of all the fines, so the last thing it's going to do is sue them for trademark infringement? I've never seen a legal situation like this before.
- dewey 2y agoI guess that's the "problem" with generic product names. There's also Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar etc. - Docs is not different than that.
- crazygringo 2y ago"Docs" isn't that generic. It's not even a word in the dictionary. It's the plural of an abbreviation. Nobody called a word processor "Docs" before Google did. If you say "open Calendar", I don't know if you mean Apple or Google or Microsoft. If you say "open Docs", I know it's Google and only Google. This is no different than if the project called itself "Word", which would be equally confusing with Microsoft. Neither Docs nor Word are genericized. They're both totally valid trademarks. Which is why naming this project "Docs" would be immediately shut down if any private organization tried it. And I've never heard of governments infringing private trademarks before, so I'm curious what's going on here.
- lioeters 2y agoDocs and Word are both generic words that need a qualification like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Otherwise they could be Open Docs or Open Word (not sure if that exists, maybe Libre Word?). Same with Books. It could be Google Books, Facebook, or Open Books.
- 2y ago
- evaneykelen 2y agoOutline is also open source (or at least “source available”): https://github.com/outline/outline https://github.com/outline/outline
- theflash666 2y agoAll features aren't available in the community edition …
- evaneykelen 2y agoDo you have a reference to the differences? I can't find it on their website nor on GitHub.
- theflash666 2y agohttps://www.getoutline.com/pricing https://www.getoutline.com/pricing, what missed back in the days was the multi-organization management
- ctrlp 2y agoI just cannot understand the appeal of these browser based note taking apps. Notion, Obsidian, Outline? Is it the collaboration feature? Why not just use Google Docs or equivalent? For notes, I don't see the appeal of having a browser interface. I just put my notes in a text file. No protocol, just search for text strings or text tags. If I need hierarchical organization, I use directories. What am I missing out on?
- jonahx 2y ago> What am I missing out on? 1. Non-technical colleagues. 2. Easy and real-time collaboration. 3. Slickness, mixing of multi-media, etc. This is related to 1. Not arguing against your preference, just answering the "why".
- staplers 2y agoI don't see the appeal of having a browser interface. You can thank work-locked machines removing any app-level flexibility. I'm not signing into any google work account on my personal phone. Browser level access allows for multi-device multi-context (personal/work) access. Also google docs/drive is deeply unusable when trying to organize mental spaces.
- e12e 2y ago> I just cannot understand the appeal of these browser based note taking apps. Notion, Obsidian, Outline? Is it the collaboration feature? Why not just use Google Docs or equivalent? Google docs is also browser based? And obviously not foss or self-hostable. Are you saying "why does Google have docs app in addition to a note taking app?" (Google docs vs Google Keep, Microsoft Word vs Microsoft OneNote etc?)
- ctrlp 2y agoI'm saying that there are already collaboration tools like Google Docs or whatever. I don't see how managing notes in such a tool beats having some text files. Working with a browser kind of sucks for write operations. It's fine or even good for reading. But writing into a browser goes through obscure layers so that, what? it can go into a database? Files on disk solve this issue. Grep over files or even a more robust index of searchable data solves the findability problem. There can be other sidecar tools to support discoverability, but I'm just focused on the HCI/UX of a browser for text entry and editing, and find it really poor compared to a text editor with files that you control and can run other tools over.
- maxloh 2y agoIt seems that the editor is supported by ProseMirror. Kudos for their work!
- YousefED 2y agoYep! Docs is using our editor BlockNote (https://www.blocknotejs.org https://www.blocknotejs.org) which builds upon Prosemirror (and we're also proud to be sponsors of Marijn from Prosemirror who's done an amazing job, indeed)
- frenchtoast8 2y agoFor a while I've been searching for a note taking app that * Allows more than one user editing the same page at once * Is accessible on a mobile device (either app or mobile browser) * Can be at the very least viewed in read only mode if disconnected from the internet The last point is the most important to me and frustratingly has been the most elusive for me to find. For now I use Notion with the hopes they implement it eventually. I can't consider switching to a self hosted alternative without the last point.
- electriclove 2y agoApple Notes?
- ryanf 2y agoHave you seen https://www.craft.do https://www.craft.do?
- crazygringo 2y agoBoth Google Keep and Google Docs meet your requirements, depending on whether you want small notes or big notes. What's wrong with those?
- MrBra 2y agowe don't need an FOSS self-hosted alternative to X. We need a FOSS alternative to the cloud/hosted model such that there's distinction between the two, everything is everywhere for everyone, free. Fediverse, but better. But we're not even at Fediverse ;)
- sylvinus 2y agoHey. A few developers from the team are on HN and will be happy to answer any questions here! We also made a small scratchpad you can use to test collaboration features, if it doesn't get too flooded :) https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/docs/a3f0becc-f2b7-45be-a5e5-bf6c9d984820/ https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/docs/a3f0becc-f2b7-45be-a5e5-...
- miki123211 2y agoWhat's your stance on accessibility? Is that something you even consider? Notion is particularly terrible here, so this could be a great alternative for people / organizations who need that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- theflash666 2y agohttps://react-spectrum.adobe.com/react-aria https://react-spectrum.adobe.com/react-aria is used in most La Suite projects. Also we have one frontend developer focused on accessibility and few auditors. We always prioritize accessibility
- manuhabitela 2y agoIt's not only considered, it's a an actual goal to be 100% usable by everyone. It's already the case for some of La Suite projects. Not quite there yet right now for some others, but it will be. And I agree, lots of popular, proprietary solutions should do better in terms of accessibility. I believe open-source helps in that regard, as in many others. Here in La Suite we have some wcag-geeks in the team and regularly include some of our users with disabilities for feedback.
- hysan 2y agoWhat led to the choice of using Blocknote over other editor packages? Would love to read about the decision making and comparisons between all the editors you considered. Also interested in any other write ups about choosing packages (ex: I see you using hocuspocus which I think is from another editor - TipTap) and why you landed on your particular tech stack.
- ex3ndr 2y agoBut outline is opensource?
- theflash666 2y agoActually some Outline feature aren't, which could be quite limiting when deployed in a large organization or institution
- amai 2y agoWhich format are they using to write/store the notes? Is it another Markdown dialect?
- theflash666 2y agoIt's based on https://www.blocknotejs.org/ https://www.blocknotejs.org/
- amai 2y agoAnd this again is based on prosemirror. So for better math support you would have the option of using https://benrbray.com/prosemirror-math/ https://benrbray.com/prosemirror-math/ .
- virdev 2y agoThe notes are stored in Y.doc format because we use Yjs for our collaboration server. https://docs.yjs.dev/api/y.doc https://docs.yjs.dev/api/y.doc
- cloudking 2y agoDocmost is another open source option https://www.docmost.com https://www.docmost.com
- noname120 2y agoLooks like an amazing alternative to Dropbox Paper
- remark5396 2y agoThere are already quiet a few softwares that claim to be Notion alternatives or seem to be: - AppFlowy: https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy - AFFiNE: https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE - SiYuan: https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan - Trillium Next: https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes - AnyType (only clients are source available): https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts
- 3x3m3 2y ago[flagged]
- ezst 2y agoCount me as a biiig proponent and user of TriliumNext, it's in my mind and experience the most capable note taking and organising app there is, but I don't think I nor any of its developers would call it a "Notion alternative".
- CountGeek 2y agoAnd Docmost - https://github.com/docmost/docmost https://github.com/docmost/docmost
- crabmusket 2y agohttps://getoutline.com https://getoutline.com mentioned in the submission title
- piokoch 2y ago"Simple collaborative editing without the formatting complexity of markdown" It is incredible that nowadays Markdown is considered "complex".
- sylvinus 2y agoWell I think that most of our users have never typed a "[" character... So for them, Markdown is definitely complex :)
- virdev 2y agoWhat's complex for most users that do not spend their days into an IDE is not seing what's your prose is going to look like and they've been use to that for a couple decade. For us it kind of made sense to support markdown + giving giving a minimalistic toolbar for users who don't know how to md. Also, you can do a lot of things in BlockNotejs you can't unless you code html and css in md (colors, blocks etc.)
- virdev 2y agoHey 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!
- alephnerd 2y agoGreat work by the Suite Numerique team! Are you guys looking at adding localization support for languages beyond French as well (eg. English, German)? It would be a great alternative to multiple disjointed OSS offerings like Mattermost or Appflowy. Also, I found the DIPT to be fairly intruiging. How much inspiration did the org get from Gov.uk, and are there some resources, papers, or books you could point to about the DIPT initiative?
- sylvinus 2y agoIndeed, Docs is already available both in English and German :) AFAIK we took a lot of inspiration from Gov.uk and 18F/USDS (RIP), at least for digital services. You can look at https://beta.gouv.fr/ https://beta.gouv.fr/
- virdev 2y agoHey! Thanks! Yes we do plan to support more languages, we want the project to be usable by the many. Translations are here : https://crowdin.com/project/lasuite-docs https://crowdin.com/project/lasuite-docs (just added turkish tonight ;)
- mkl 2y agoDo you have plans to add structure to the document collection? E.g. group documents into projects, put documents into order and hierarchy (docs holding chapters, sections). I would really like a system that lets you have projects with a document per chapter or section and has a chapter/section outline on the left panel of the document editor. Comments and custom styles would also be great.
- kalipso 2y agoAnyone knows if there is something like that with heavy focus on privacy? basically decentralized offline first, end2end encrypted collaborative note taking/knowledgedb is something iam looking for.
- rvense 2y agoNo, but the French and German governments just gave you an excellent code base to start from!
- CountGeek 2y agoA while back this was posted on HN - https://github.com/docmost/docmost/ https://github.com/docmost/docmost/
- virdev 2y agoWe plan on getting e2ee as we have the military are interested in using it. From what we investigated there will be some tradeoff feature wise (attribution of edits will be harder for example). Happy to receive some help on that front.
- ldubost 2y agoFor e2ee you might want to have a look at CryptPad (https://cryptpad.org https://cryptpad.org). You can test it on the free instance https://cryptpad.fr https://cryptpad.fr You'll have plenty of doc types with full end to end encryption, including for your drive.
- aetherspawn 2y agoI’ve been looking for something like this that also has a Whiteboard feature (think Miro) to deploy self-hosted at a small business. It has taken me these places: Obsidian - has whiteboard, but not collaborative. Sync plugin cannot be self hosted. Open source sync doesn’t have user management. Affine - ditto. Also not completely open source. Logseq - ditto. Some text editing features require advanced knowledge of databases to use (ie writing query) making it difficult to deploy to non-technical staff. Excalidraw - whiteboards only.
- Pi9h 2y agoI am building Docmost (Open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion). We have integrated support for Excalidraw, Draw.io and Mermaid diagrams; Plus real-time collaboration. Github: https://github.com/docmost/docmost https://github.com/docmost/docmost
- aetherspawn 2y agoThis looks really good.
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoGreat idea, but Django as back-end is a very bad choice.
- janceek 2y agoNo? What makes you think that
- naveed125 2y agoNot sure how its different from self hosted outline?
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 2y agoUpon reviewing the Docker Compose, I noticed a large number of containers. Although this could be seen as negative feedback, I view it as a challenge and make time to address it as a self-hoster.
- wuming2 2y agoThe reality is nowadays few documents need desktop publishing features. Because seldom if ever become paper documents. Also the average back office author knows a tiny fraction of Microsoft Word or Excel features. Give them means to type in text, add pictures and collaborate. Templates for beautification. That’s all what is needed. This has been known for ages. Alas Microsoft has a grip on governments and large orgs we know little about. CERN is an example.
- mmooss 2y ago> nowadays few documents need desktop publishing features. Because seldom if ever become paper documents. I rarely read paper, but I find professionally designed documents much easier to read on my screens. It's such a relief to open a PDF of a professionally designed book, for example, after reading screenfuls of html.
- wuming2 2y agoAgreed. Here I invoke the wisdom of groff old timers and of younger CSS developers: where the latter stops being useful when a professional looking pdf must be generated? I can prepare a decent looking document, or spreadsheet, with LibreOffice styles (CSS) without particular effort. With Docs should not be much different. Have seen official government Word documents with formatting in need of assistance. Teams at very large firms share Word documents, via email, forth and back debating about revisions of text and numbers. Publishing was only the necessary last step. In most cases authors use the bare minimum of functions to get the job done. Professional looking is something else instead. I don’t know where Docs stands here.
- imoreno 2y agoFrom the top of the readme: > without the formatting complexity of markdown Really, markdown is complicated of all things?
- addcommitpush 2y agoFor non technical people used to WYSIWYG, yes?
- xyst 2y agoWonder how good this is at resolving merge conflicts: > Offline? No problem, keep writing, your edits will get synced when back online Have been burned too many times in college. person 1: is updating doc person 2: is updating doc person 3; updating doc (( doc reaches a dozen pages )) person 3 loses internet connection but everyone else continues working Person 3 adds and edits a handful of pages while offline while #1, #2 keep chugging along. #3 internet is restored and now the system attempts to merge in their changes and sync changes from #1, #2. At the same time, #1, #2 receiving updates from #3 Now chaos ensues as the system is throwing a shit ton of errors and old changes getting reverted. Immediate showstopper. Not so fun times. And a lesson learned.
- kowalej 2y agoWas just thinking how my team can get off current Notion lock in, this looks promising. Might be able to contribute as well, being a Django shop.
- virdev 2y agoCool! Let us know how it goes would love to see you in the contributors :)
- simonebrunozzi 2y ago> Run it locally - Running Docs locally using the methods described below is for testing purposes only. It is based on building Docs using Minio as the S3 storage solution but you can choose any S3 compatible object storage of your choice. > Prerequisite > Make sure you have a recent version of Docker and Docker Compose installed on your laptop: See, this is the issue. If you want adoption, you can't assume that users are familiar with this. You should start with a dmg for Mac users.
- photonios 2y agoI love that this is funded by the French&German government. Go Europe! Wonderful to see. My only wish is that other EU governments (my own included) would invest even more into projects like this.
- virdev 2y agoHey! The Netherlands joined recently. Let’s hope more countries follow
- Johnson8053 2y agopersonally prefer affine.pro. selfhosted is enough for me
- piokoch 2y agoThat's a nice shot, that probably is not going to change much. This is a neat alternative for Notion if you are small company, but with strong IT team that will maintain installation (all the boring stuff from updates to backups). If you are 20 person startup then Notion will cost you around 200 Euro per month. Having Docs installation will be cheaper? Will 200 Euros cover the expenses? I am afraid the math is not on the Docs side. First question that any bigger organization will ask is: how SSO will work, what is the integration with our company LDAP, etc. If they hear that well, install Docs for yourself and figure out integration by yourself no manager would agree to use Docs, as from his or her perspective it is cheaper, less risky to go with something like Notion. It is also true even with gov administration or public universities, they also operate within IT infrastructure and they gladly take something free, but it must integrate with that IT infrastructure. If not, this is not an option.
- virdev 2y agoHey there! Thanks for the comment. I have to disagree with you. For government and large legs it makes less and less sense to just pay for licences. If you pay per user it becomes a huge chunk of your budget AND you have no control on your IT nor the budget to hire people. In the context we live and especially in Europe it also make no sense to opt for an American vendor who has to give access to US gov if asked to. And for small orgs I don’t see why there’d be no large mutualized instance that everyone can use for a reasonable price that pays for the ops team running it + server expenses.
- samtuke 2y agoLove 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.
- shyang 2y agoThere is also HedgeDoc (https://hedgedoc.org/ https://hedgedoc.org/). I found it useful for (1) collaboration, and (2) being able to write in the Markdown syntax w/ side-by-side rendering. (Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31645045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31645045)
- bzg 2y agoFor more Free Software developed within the French public sector, check https://code.gouv.fr/sources/#/awesome https://code.gouv.fr/sources/#/awesome
- progx 2y agoDark mode?
- hackburg 2y ago[dead]
- rayrrr 2y agoFor my data engineers, some similes: basic note taking apps like Joplin are like a data warehouse. Notion is like a data lake. What we need is something like a data lakehouse. Hopefully this might be it.
- datadrivenangel 2y agoObsidian! It's a lot cheaper than databricks.
- m4l1c3 2y agoC'est cool ça comme projet! - Pas mal non? c'est Français! :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- blacklight 2y agoThis got me genuinely interested - until I cloned the project and saw the docker-compose file. Minio + Celery + 4-5 services just for the main app + Keycloak? I'm sorry, but this isn't something that "anyone can run". This is something that requires a beefy server and someone who can manage microservice architectures with 10+ services. I'm not sure why all of those services are requirements for the app. I don't know why you need an S3 provider and a federated identity manager to run something that looks like Notion. I don't know why you need to split the app into 5 microservices. And I honestly don't think that all of this overhead is needed. I'll give Docs another look if it decides to trim some of this bloatware.
- foundzen 2y agowhy everyone ends up using yjs as their choice of CRDT framework. aren't there better alternative or it is just following the popular choice?
- dcchambers 2y ago> Offline? No problem, keep writing, your edits will get synced when back online I'm sold.
- elitegolfhub 2y ago[dead]
- TheDong 2y agoAnyone know the system requirements? I got bit by notion when I assumed my recent i7 would be enough for it to keep up with my typing speed, but after a few pages of notes, notion uses 100% of a core and input lags considerably....
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]