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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 oppo

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.

johndhi 2y ago
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 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 ago
    Tchap is based on Matrix for those who wonder and can't read french
- armarr 2y ago
  Being dependent on foreign companies is a security issue. The economic value is more subtle and indirect but it is there
  - AJ007 2y ago
    It's also not a reliable source of funding as some European open source projects have learned.
    - weakfish 2y ago
      Can you provide a source / examples?
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  Things like this aren't about economic growth, they're about reducing the reliance on foreign services
- mcintyre1994 2y ago
  I don’t think in this case they’re really trying to compete - they just need something better than any of the open source solutions available and are then open sourcing that. I doubt they’re going to get into the business of hosting public instances or marketing to businesses. It wouldn’t make sense to rely on a foreign closed source company if they want to do anything serious with this IMO.
- emacsen 2y ago
  There's so much here to discuss that we could only ever touch on the surface level, but let's give it a go. Let's first start with what I understand to be the premise- that private industry and governments are two worlds (ie your worlds colliding idea). Let's explore this from the other side: Private industry should never compete with the government. We don't need bottled water- tap is fine, and it competes with government water. Commercial radio and TV stations should not exist in countries that have a public station. Doctors and nurses should never work in private clinics where government offers medical services, or supplementary insurance should not exist. Back to government, though. Government should do what's best for the citizenry. It might make a public bridge to compete with a commercial ferry service. Or it might mean offering cheap Internet to compete with exploitive ISPs. Proprietary software like this is an effective tax on the citizens, but a commercial one. Governments can fund a public alternative for a small amount of money. Why not?
- bayindirh 2y ago
  No, it doesn't. First, you create the tools you need with the money your people give you. Then, you give back the tools you created to the public and/or everyone who needs them. You keep your data in your own data center, use the tools which squarely fills the needs of your workers and people, and you share its maintenance with the outside users. It's a win-win-win (country, its workers, people in the world). WWW is developed the same way, Europe's open data repository Zenodo (https://zenodo.org https://zenodo.org) is built the same way, alongside countless science tools. We shouldn't be afraid of governments doing cool things. Heck, most if not all supercomputer centers in the US and around the world are government funded, and free for scientists. Moreover, the project is licensed MIT to enable to be "taken and ran with it" by private sector. From the README.md: > While Docs is a public driven initiative our licence (sic) choice is an invitation for private sector actors to use, sell and contribute to the project.
  - phillc73 2y ago
    Why “licence (sic)”? It’s the correct spelling.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      I know it's the correct spelling for UK English, but US uses license. I just wanted to make sure that I copied it verbatim, that's all.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - virdev 2y ago
    > We shouldn't be afraid of governments doing cool things Yes! And you'd be surprised by the kind of talent we're able to attract. People want cool stuff to be built by the public. After all its also their money that's being spent. But you need to provide the right environment for their talent not to go waste and thats not easy.
    - 2y ago
- rtpg 2y ago
  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 coordinated efforts and entirely sidestep the economy to get the good things. All the people who were working on Notion now can go get some on the job training to learn to farm. Why don't we just do this for everything? You can go read a bunch of political and economic philosophy about that.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - chuckadams 2y ago
      The annoying thing about pure ideologies is that they're unattainable. This turns out to be convenient for ideologues though, who insist we just have to clap louder.
  - DeathArrow 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tough 2y ago
      Do we have a tally of communist vs capitalist millions of victims I feel like we never had 'real' communism, as much as we never had real 'free markets' yet but that's just a vibe
      - sMarsIntruder 2y ago
        Well there are/were many ‘real’ communism implementations of closed societies. While you’re right that there are no ‘free markets’ experiments, just some bad Crony Capitalism.
- nchagnet 2y ago
  I get your point, and I agree to some extent, but I also don't think it has to be black and white. I don't really trust the French government to fund such projects long-term, but at the same time private companies create and end services all the time (looking at you Google). So within those parameters, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. And regarding the economy, my understanding is that there's been a push in the French government (and in Europe to some extent) towards more independent services (the recent behaviour of US big tech are not helping for sure). If the government is going to generate some tool for its internal use, I sure would prefer if they open sourced it at the same time. Finally for the WhatsApp alternative, if France or Germany or whoever else started an open source WhatsApp competitor with better encryption, I definitely think it would be good for European citizens: one less dependency on Meta. Why wouldn't we want that?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanSrich 2y ago
  It's insane yes. What an incredible waste of tax dollars.
  - nchagnet 2y ago
    Thankfully it's tax euros!
  - rvense 2y ago
    When your health sector is being shaken down by foreign monopoly for software licenses whose prices increase for no reason, making your own word processor suddenly doesn't seem very different to training your own doctors.
    - ryanSrich 2y ago
      They could try innovating and actually supporting an economy of entrepreneurship so individuals are incentivized to build better tools in their home country instead of coming here. Too bad VC _almost_ exclusively exists in the US. What Europe calls VC is a joke.
      - rvense 2y ago
        The world would be much better without much of what American venture capital has created over the past twenty years. Ad tech mass surveillance, Uber eating labour protections, "Unicorn" worshpping monopolization of basic utilities.
        ryanSrich 2y ago
        Would much rather have the hell world American VC has created than the alternative hell world of the euro uber-government.
        rvense 2y ago
        Can you give me some concrete examples of where Euro uber-government is negatively impacting my life?
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  >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. The economy works best when anyone does what is supposed to: the Government sticks to maintaining order, defending the country, public healthcare, public education. The companies are producing goods and services. Governments trying to undercut businesses isn't doing any good to the economy. There will be less money, less jobs.
  - rfrey 2y ago
    Many Americans think public healthcare competes with private hospitals and insurance companies. A criticism of public education in the beginning was that it would put (private) schools out of business. All we're talking about here is where the line is.
  - nchagnet 2y ago
    This argument could be made for healthcare, postal services, and even emergency services. Thankfully in Europe we don't agree with that view. Entrepreneurship is an important engine for innovation, but it doesn't mean our collective representation cannot fund projects which serve the whole community if we see fit.
  - rvense 2y ago
    Are they undercutting businesses or creating new ones? Running and supporting an instance of a suite of open source tools can be a business.
- danmaz74 2y ago
  Your example of WhatsApp is a perfect one for me to say: yes, I would much rather use for my private messaging an open source, publicly founded solution, than a solution which Mark Zuckerberg controls for his own private gain.
- sMarsIntruder 2y ago
  You’re right. That’s economically inefficient, but apparently seems to be the only way to create models that compete with the bigs. IMHO this repo will die within few years, and that’s both a pity and a waste of public money.
  - sMarsIntruder 2y ago
    Guys, pls say that government-funded open source projects are fine, otherwise prepare to get downvoted just because it is.
  - ezst 2y ago
    It may or may not die within few years (I'm placing my bets on the optimistic side), if it delivers value today, and the alternative is a cost prohibitive walled garden unsuitable for sensitive data, then it's well worth it cost in public money already.
  - virdev 2y ago
    Do you any idea of how much collaborative suites cost to government every year? 10's if not 100's of millions! They have millions of public servents. The investement to build Docs is a drop of water in the the ocean in comparison.
- fluidcruft 2y ago
  Private industry can always build on open source as well. The just work on the parts that don't involve reinventing the wheel.
- afavour 2y ago
  IMO there are a few interesting things to unpack here. Going to put your WhatsApp comparison aside because I don’t think it’s actually applicable. When it comes to software these governments are already shelling out X amount of money (which they don’t with WhatsApp, hence putting it aside). If they can make a comparable product they themselves own with X * 0.5 money it’s a clear win. Even if it’s X * 1.5 money to begin with while they create the software then decreasing over time as the software stabilises it’s still a win. There’s an additional economic factor as well. For any country that isn’t the US licensing off the shelf software means transferring money directly to the US economy. Creating your own homegrown version keeps that money in your country, paying for employees that will themselves contribute to the economy. Without making the thread overtly political, this is something a lot of countries are thinking about more and more recently.
- diggan 2y ago
  > 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. I'm curious to know why that seems off. If you're a "free market" proponent, you usually are because you want people to have access to "the best", as that's what competition is supposed to bring out. And if a government manages to come up with a better Whatsapp (whatever that means), and users starts to change, then clearly the alternative is better, as proven by users moving over, so then even someone who wants free markets would believe that this is a good outcome, if I understand things correctly. But instead it sounds crazy to you, it seems. It would be interesting to hear more about why you feel this is crazy. To me it sounds like a good idea for users, which I guess is what I care more about.
- addicted 2y ago
  > am I wrong that it sounds crazy and inefficient for the government to essentially compete with private industry? The Internet is a strong and definitive counterpoint to this claim, IMO. If the government didn’t create the open internet, we would all be living in AOL style walled gardens right now.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    For many on facebook, this is indeed the case. FB is just AOL for GenX and Boomers.
- fastasucan 2y ago
  Why is it better that 5 private companies make the same product and compete against each other in marketing? Why should the government buy a product from them, and spend lots of money to tailor it to their needs, without even owning the finished product?
  - jahewson 2y ago
    Where do governments get their money from? Taxes on economic activity. The more economic activity the government performs itself, the less opportunity there is to raise tax revenue. Take this through to its logical conclusion and you have the government owning farms, making food, making its own steel, building its own cars, etc. with a corresponding loss of revenue-raising activity in the real economy.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Government can and does tax its workers and suppliers. In a bubble, there is no revenue raising difference between a government owned economy and a private economy with equal production. Realistic differences come down to comparative disfunction of management (IMO, best considered in terms of which is worse).
    - sitkack 2y ago
      The government isn't in the business of consuming tax revenue. Its mission is to most efficiently serve the needs of its constituents. Government services help everyone and raise the floor of the standard of living. Someone is now free to go write and do SOMETHING else and sell that. By your logic, we should get rid of libraries since more economic activity would happen if everyone had to buy their own books.
    - theflash666 2y ago
      From my understanding, most European governments purchase American or other foreign-owned software, which often does not contribute to tax revenues in the countries where it is used.
      - 2y ago
- blitzar 2y ago
  The big tech billionaires got there by taking the same money from the government and keeping the ownership. If the government money keeps the ownership in the hands of "we the people" then that sounds good to me.
- mike-the-mikado 2y ago
  I think this is quite right. The government should get out of the business of building roads and giving them away for free. If they were privately owned, they would be priced appropriately and we would not have all the problems with traffic congestion.
  - VerminOctopus1 2y ago
    Is this a parody comment? Hard to tell on this website to be honest.
- Lutger 2y ago
  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.
nrjames 2y ago
Vendor lock-in is risky and expensive for large corporations and governments, both of which tend to move slowly. I find it completely legitimate that a government would create a tool that's useful to its workforce and helps to avoid vendor lock-in. Insomuch as it's created by the government, it's released as open source. Most companies and people aren't going to want to maintain the VMs and/or infrastructure to run their own platforms, so they have the option to continue using SaaS offerings like Notion.
KronisLV 2y ago
Personally, even if this software wouldn't be 1:1 capable of replacing the established players, it still feels like a good idea. With how much people (rightfully) complain about how open source is underfunded and with how often we're forced into borderline exploitative dealings with the established players in the market (the likes of MS Office, Adobe products, Atlassian products, even some Oracle stuff), funding the development of open alternatives (even if done with some comparatively small amount of taxes) seems like a good idea, as long as everyone in the government isn't incompetent. For example, if we had governments with strong tech departments that could fund helping the development of LibreOffice, then suddenly even if someone wants to use MS Office, that's still a bargaining chip to get a better deal because there's a viable alternative. Or to develop something like OpenProject, Kanboard etc., alternatives to the likes of Jira, that might be enough for many out there, while also possibly benefitting from community contributions. People love to complain about how Jira supposedly sucks, so that'd be a good opportunity to step up and make something "better". Or using open source technologies like PostgreSQL or MariaDB/MySQL for developing their own internal systems instead of always forking over a bunch of cash for Oracle or MS SQL by default. If you want a government that's cost efficient, then invest in making it be so, treat the software landscape as an investment opportunity - spend some money now to save a bunch of money later. The same way how an app can be a home cooked meal, some software could be a public utility.
- afavour 2y ago
  Germany has an interesting history with Open/LibreOffice. Multiple attempts that ended up going back to Windows, but with fresh attempts that are ongoing: https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost_state_ditches_windows/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost...
  - KronisLV 2y ago
    There have been some similar attempts over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Mass_deployments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Mass_deployments Some larger than others, some attempts at having more negotiating power, others as a cost cutting measure, others yet as just exploration of what's doable. I'd say that LibreOffice is fine for my needs - not great in all respects, but functional. I don't even have MS Office or use Google Docs on any of my devices right now.
wslh 2y ago
> Of course, there is always the risk that this becomes unmaintained in the future We can't even be certain that Notion won't be acquired, deprecated, or poorly maintained in the future. Risks exist on both sides.
- diggan 2y ago
  > We can't even be certain that Notion won't be acquired, deprecated, or poorly maintained in the future. At this point, I feel like we can be pretty sure the combination of "Huge VC investments + for-profit startup" will with 99% certainly eventually lead down the road of enshittification, either by acquisition or by going public. At least based on most previous "internet" startups with that combination.
  - bornfreddy 2y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted... This is exactly where the incentives lead the VC-funded companies. Unless they can be extremely profitable by charging money for their product of course, but I don't think Notion can pull this off. The market is just not there, imho.
    - conradfr 2y ago
      It's not even cheap.
- bluedino 2y ago
  Anyone remember Evernote?
- esafak 2y ago
  It happened to Coda.
ivanmontillam 2y ago
I couldn't upvote you more than once. I agree wholeheartedly with your point. Government-funded open source like this, creating alternatives is a good idea. Taxes put to good use!
- virdev 2y ago
  Yes yes yes and yes Public Money Public Code!
  - aitchnyu 2y ago
    How does it work when gov outsources major tech to the private sector?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sitkack 2y ago
That is what grants are for! The government(s) get the exact software they want by a whole field full of folks that know how to make those changes.
- virdev 2y ago
  Docs actually thanks to the open source grant system we have in Europe. The hard part in a project like Docs is the text editor. We built Docs on top of [Blocknotejs](https://www.blocknotejs.org/ https://www.blocknotejs.org/) an [NGI funded](https://ngi.eu/funded_solution/blocknote/ https://ngi.eu/funded_solution/blocknote/) library. NGI (Next Generation Internet) and NLNet has been doing an amazing job funding thousands of projects and we are seing the amazing results today. NGI is a program of the European Union
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Nice. Wonderful! This needs to spread as far and wide as it can.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zwnow 2y ago
Speaking from experience, in Germany people refuse to learn any new software and are quickly overwhelmed if 1 thing is different from what they are used to. Open source government solutions are good and all, people will only use them if forced to by law though. Public offices are one of the reasons our digitalization is really far behind.
wvh 2y ago
When universities, libraries, government and open-source community could unite and, perhaps most crucially, find a benevolent dictator for life that could shepherd the herd of cats with all noses in one direction instead of getting bogged down in academic or governmental committee mud, we might have Nice Things that are not in the hands of any one party but owned by all (i.e. the tax payer, and volunteers). Those projects could truly be owned by the public and not solely corporations or government. Clearly data is the big thing, and I don't want to have to trust a government or corporation with access to all of it. In reality, having been part of some of these projects, they often get bogged down by getting all parties and funding organised, in other words, death by committee.

johndhi 2y ago

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 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 ago
  Tchap is based on Matrix for those who wonder and can't read french
armarr 2y ago
Being dependent on foreign companies is a security issue. The economic value is more subtle and indirect but it is there
- AJ007 2y ago
  It's also not a reliable source of funding as some European open source projects have learned.
  - weakfish 2y ago
    Can you provide a source / examples?
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
Things like this aren't about economic growth, they're about reducing the reliance on foreign services
mcintyre1994 2y ago
I don’t think in this case they’re really trying to compete - they just need something better than any of the open source solutions available and are then open sourcing that. I doubt they’re going to get into the business of hosting public instances or marketing to businesses. It wouldn’t make sense to rely on a foreign closed source company if they want to do anything serious with this IMO.
emacsen 2y ago
There's so much here to discuss that we could only ever touch on the surface level, but let's give it a go. Let's first start with what I understand to be the premise- that private industry and governments are two worlds (ie your worlds colliding idea). Let's explore this from the other side: Private industry should never compete with the government. We don't need bottled water- tap is fine, and it competes with government water. Commercial radio and TV stations should not exist in countries that have a public station. Doctors and nurses should never work in private clinics where government offers medical services, or supplementary insurance should not exist. Back to government, though. Government should do what's best for the citizenry. It might make a public bridge to compete with a commercial ferry service. Or it might mean offering cheap Internet to compete with exploitive ISPs. Proprietary software like this is an effective tax on the citizens, but a commercial one. Governments can fund a public alternative for a small amount of money. Why not?
bayindirh 2y ago
No, it doesn't. First, you create the tools you need with the money your people give you. Then, you give back the tools you created to the public and/or everyone who needs them. You keep your data in your own data center, use the tools which squarely fills the needs of your workers and people, and you share its maintenance with the outside users. It's a win-win-win (country, its workers, people in the world). WWW is developed the same way, Europe's open data repository Zenodo (https://zenodo.org https://zenodo.org) is built the same way, alongside countless science tools. We shouldn't be afraid of governments doing cool things. Heck, most if not all supercomputer centers in the US and around the world are government funded, and free for scientists. Moreover, the project is licensed MIT to enable to be "taken and ran with it" by private sector. From the README.md: > While Docs is a public driven initiative our licence (sic) choice is an invitation for private sector actors to use, sell and contribute to the project.
- phillc73 2y ago
  Why “licence (sic)”? It’s the correct spelling.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    I know it's the correct spelling for UK English, but US uses license. I just wanted to make sure that I copied it verbatim, that's all.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- virdev 2y ago
  > We shouldn't be afraid of governments doing cool things Yes! And you'd be surprised by the kind of talent we're able to attract. People want cool stuff to be built by the public. After all its also their money that's being spent. But you need to provide the right environment for their talent not to go waste and thats not easy.
  - 2y ago
rtpg 2y ago
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 coordinated efforts and entirely sidestep the economy to get the good things. All the people who were working on Notion now can go get some on the job training to learn to farm. Why don't we just do this for everything? You can go read a bunch of political and economic philosophy about that.
- coliveira 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    The annoying thing about pure ideologies is that they're unattainable. This turns out to be convenient for ideologues though, who insist we just have to clap louder.
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tough 2y ago
    Do we have a tally of communist vs capitalist millions of victims I feel like we never had 'real' communism, as much as we never had real 'free markets' yet but that's just a vibe
    - sMarsIntruder 2y ago
      Well there are/were many ‘real’ communism implementations of closed societies. While you’re right that there are no ‘free markets’ experiments, just some bad Crony Capitalism.
nchagnet 2y ago
I get your point, and I agree to some extent, but I also don't think it has to be black and white. I don't really trust the French government to fund such projects long-term, but at the same time private companies create and end services all the time (looking at you Google). So within those parameters, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. And regarding the economy, my understanding is that there's been a push in the French government (and in Europe to some extent) towards more independent services (the recent behaviour of US big tech are not helping for sure). If the government is going to generate some tool for its internal use, I sure would prefer if they open sourced it at the same time. Finally for the WhatsApp alternative, if France or Germany or whoever else started an open source WhatsApp competitor with better encryption, I definitely think it would be good for European citizens: one less dependency on Meta. Why wouldn't we want that?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ryanSrich 2y ago
It's insane yes. What an incredible waste of tax dollars.
- nchagnet 2y ago
  Thankfully it's tax euros!
- rvense 2y ago
  When your health sector is being shaken down by foreign monopoly for software licenses whose prices increase for no reason, making your own word processor suddenly doesn't seem very different to training your own doctors.
  - ryanSrich 2y ago
    They could try innovating and actually supporting an economy of entrepreneurship so individuals are incentivized to build better tools in their home country instead of coming here. Too bad VC _almost_ exclusively exists in the US. What Europe calls VC is a joke.
    - rvense 2y ago
      The world would be much better without much of what American venture capital has created over the past twenty years. Ad tech mass surveillance, Uber eating labour protections, "Unicorn" worshpping monopolization of basic utilities.
      - ryanSrich 2y ago
        Would much rather have the hell world American VC has created than the alternative hell world of the euro uber-government.
        rvense 2y ago
        Can you give me some concrete examples of where Euro uber-government is negatively impacting my life?
DeathArrow 2y ago
>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. The economy works best when anyone does what is supposed to: the Government sticks to maintaining order, defending the country, public healthcare, public education. The companies are producing goods and services. Governments trying to undercut businesses isn't doing any good to the economy. There will be less money, less jobs.
- rfrey 2y ago
  Many Americans think public healthcare competes with private hospitals and insurance companies. A criticism of public education in the beginning was that it would put (private) schools out of business. All we're talking about here is where the line is.
- nchagnet 2y ago
  This argument could be made for healthcare, postal services, and even emergency services. Thankfully in Europe we don't agree with that view. Entrepreneurship is an important engine for innovation, but it doesn't mean our collective representation cannot fund projects which serve the whole community if we see fit.
- rvense 2y ago
  Are they undercutting businesses or creating new ones? Running and supporting an instance of a suite of open source tools can be a business.
danmaz74 2y ago
Your example of WhatsApp is a perfect one for me to say: yes, I would much rather use for my private messaging an open source, publicly founded solution, than a solution which Mark Zuckerberg controls for his own private gain.
sMarsIntruder 2y ago
You’re right. That’s economically inefficient, but apparently seems to be the only way to create models that compete with the bigs. IMHO this repo will die within few years, and that’s both a pity and a waste of public money.
- sMarsIntruder 2y ago
  Guys, pls say that government-funded open source projects are fine, otherwise prepare to get downvoted just because it is.
- ezst 2y ago
  It may or may not die within few years (I'm placing my bets on the optimistic side), if it delivers value today, and the alternative is a cost prohibitive walled garden unsuitable for sensitive data, then it's well worth it cost in public money already.
- virdev 2y ago
  Do you any idea of how much collaborative suites cost to government every year? 10's if not 100's of millions! They have millions of public servents. The investement to build Docs is a drop of water in the the ocean in comparison.
fluidcruft 2y ago
Private industry can always build on open source as well. The just work on the parts that don't involve reinventing the wheel.
afavour 2y ago
IMO there are a few interesting things to unpack here. Going to put your WhatsApp comparison aside because I don’t think it’s actually applicable. When it comes to software these governments are already shelling out X amount of money (which they don’t with WhatsApp, hence putting it aside). If they can make a comparable product they themselves own with X * 0.5 money it’s a clear win. Even if it’s X * 1.5 money to begin with while they create the software then decreasing over time as the software stabilises it’s still a win. There’s an additional economic factor as well. For any country that isn’t the US licensing off the shelf software means transferring money directly to the US economy. Creating your own homegrown version keeps that money in your country, paying for employees that will themselves contribute to the economy. Without making the thread overtly political, this is something a lot of countries are thinking about more and more recently.
diggan 2y ago
> 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. I'm curious to know why that seems off. If you're a "free market" proponent, you usually are because you want people to have access to "the best", as that's what competition is supposed to bring out. And if a government manages to come up with a better Whatsapp (whatever that means), and users starts to change, then clearly the alternative is better, as proven by users moving over, so then even someone who wants free markets would believe that this is a good outcome, if I understand things correctly. But instead it sounds crazy to you, it seems. It would be interesting to hear more about why you feel this is crazy. To me it sounds like a good idea for users, which I guess is what I care more about.
addicted 2y ago
> am I wrong that it sounds crazy and inefficient for the government to essentially compete with private industry? The Internet is a strong and definitive counterpoint to this claim, IMO. If the government didn’t create the open internet, we would all be living in AOL style walled gardens right now.
- sitkack 2y ago
  For many on facebook, this is indeed the case. FB is just AOL for GenX and Boomers.
fastasucan 2y ago
Why is it better that 5 private companies make the same product and compete against each other in marketing? Why should the government buy a product from them, and spend lots of money to tailor it to their needs, without even owning the finished product?
- jahewson 2y ago
  Where do governments get their money from? Taxes on economic activity. The more economic activity the government performs itself, the less opportunity there is to raise tax revenue. Take this through to its logical conclusion and you have the government owning farms, making food, making its own steel, building its own cars, etc. with a corresponding loss of revenue-raising activity in the real economy.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Government can and does tax its workers and suppliers. In a bubble, there is no revenue raising difference between a government owned economy and a private economy with equal production. Realistic differences come down to comparative disfunction of management (IMO, best considered in terms of which is worse).
  - sitkack 2y ago
    The government isn't in the business of consuming tax revenue. Its mission is to most efficiently serve the needs of its constituents. Government services help everyone and raise the floor of the standard of living. Someone is now free to go write and do SOMETHING else and sell that. By your logic, we should get rid of libraries since more economic activity would happen if everyone had to buy their own books.
  - theflash666 2y ago
    From my understanding, most European governments purchase American or other foreign-owned software, which often does not contribute to tax revenues in the countries where it is used.
    - 2y ago
blitzar 2y ago
The big tech billionaires got there by taking the same money from the government and keeping the ownership. If the government money keeps the ownership in the hands of "we the people" then that sounds good to me.
mike-the-mikado 2y ago
I think this is quite right. The government should get out of the business of building roads and giving them away for free. If they were privately owned, they would be priced appropriately and we would not have all the problems with traffic congestion.
- VerminOctopus1 2y ago
  Is this a parody comment? Hard to tell on this website to be honest.
Lutger 2y ago
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.

nrjames 2y ago

Vendor lock-in is risky and expensive for large corporations and governments, both of which tend to move slowly. I find it completely legitimate that a government would create a tool that's useful to its workforce and helps to avoid vendor lock-in. Insomuch as it's created by the government, it's released as open source. Most companies and people aren't going to want to maintain the VMs and/or infrastructure to run their own platforms, so they have the option to continue using SaaS offerings like Notion.

KronisLV 2y ago

Personally, even if this software wouldn't be 1:1 capable of replacing the established players, it still feels like a good idea. With how much people (rightfully) complain about how open source is underfunded and with how often we're forced into borderline exploitative dealings with the established players in the market (the likes of MS Office, Adobe products, Atlassian products, even some Oracle stuff), funding the development of open alternatives (even if done with some comparatively small amount of taxes) seems like a good idea, as long as everyone in the government isn't incompetent. For example, if we had governments with strong tech departments that could fund helping the development of LibreOffice, then suddenly even if someone wants to use MS Office, that's still a bargaining chip to get a better deal because there's a viable alternative. Or to develop something like OpenProject, Kanboard etc., alternatives to the likes of Jira, that might be enough for many out there, while also possibly benefitting from community contributions. People love to complain about how Jira supposedly sucks, so that'd be a good opportunity to step up and make something "better". Or using open source technologies like PostgreSQL or MariaDB/MySQL for developing their own internal systems instead of always forking over a bunch of cash for Oracle or MS SQL by default. If you want a government that's cost efficient, then invest in making it be so, treat the software landscape as an investment opportunity - spend some money now to save a bunch of money later. The same way how an app can be a home cooked meal, some software could be a public utility.

afavour 2y ago
Germany has an interesting history with Open/LibreOffice. Multiple attempts that ended up going back to Windows, but with fresh attempts that are ongoing: https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost_state_ditches_windows/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost...
- KronisLV 2y ago
  There have been some similar attempts over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Mass_deployments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Mass_deployments Some larger than others, some attempts at having more negotiating power, others as a cost cutting measure, others yet as just exploration of what's doable. I'd say that LibreOffice is fine for my needs - not great in all respects, but functional. I don't even have MS Office or use Google Docs on any of my devices right now.

wslh 2y ago

> Of course, there is always the risk that this becomes unmaintained in the future We can't even be certain that Notion won't be acquired, deprecated, or poorly maintained in the future. Risks exist on both sides.

diggan 2y ago
> We can't even be certain that Notion won't be acquired, deprecated, or poorly maintained in the future. At this point, I feel like we can be pretty sure the combination of "Huge VC investments + for-profit startup" will with 99% certainly eventually lead down the road of enshittification, either by acquisition or by going public. At least based on most previous "internet" startups with that combination.
- bornfreddy 2y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted... This is exactly where the incentives lead the VC-funded companies. Unless they can be extremely profitable by charging money for their product of course, but I don't think Notion can pull this off. The market is just not there, imho.
  - conradfr 2y ago
    It's not even cheap.
bluedino 2y ago
Anyone remember Evernote?
esafak 2y ago
It happened to Coda.

ivanmontillam 2y ago

I couldn't upvote you more than once. I agree wholeheartedly with your point. Government-funded open source like this, creating alternatives is a good idea. Taxes put to good use!

virdev 2y ago
Yes yes yes and yes Public Money Public Code!
- aitchnyu 2y ago
  How does it work when gov outsources major tech to the private sector?
deleted 2y ago
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sitkack 2y ago

That is what grants are for! The government(s) get the exact software they want by a whole field full of folks that know how to make those changes.

virdev 2y ago
Docs actually thanks to the open source grant system we have in Europe. The hard part in a project like Docs is the text editor. We built Docs on top of [Blocknotejs](https://www.blocknotejs.org/ https://www.blocknotejs.org/) an [NGI funded](https://ngi.eu/funded_solution/blocknote/ https://ngi.eu/funded_solution/blocknote/) library. NGI (Next Generation Internet) and NLNet has been doing an amazing job funding thousands of projects and we are seing the amazing results today. NGI is a program of the European Union
- sitkack 2y ago
  Nice. Wonderful! This needs to spread as far and wide as it can.

deleted 2y ago

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zwnow 2y ago

Speaking from experience, in Germany people refuse to learn any new software and are quickly overwhelmed if 1 thing is different from what they are used to. Open source government solutions are good and all, people will only use them if forced to by law though. Public offices are one of the reasons our digitalization is really far behind.

wvh 2y ago

When universities, libraries, government and open-source community could unite and, perhaps most crucially, find a benevolent dictator for life that could shepherd the herd of cats with all noses in one direction instead of getting bogged down in academic or governmental committee mud, we might have Nice Things that are not in the hands of any one party but owned by all (i.e. the tax payer, and volunteers). Those projects could truly be owned by the public and not solely corporations or government. Clearly data is the big thing, and I don't want to have to trust a government or corporation with access to all of it. In reality, having been part of some of these projects, they often get bogged down by getting all parties and funding organised, in other words, death by committee.