Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

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...

> 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 those characteristics.

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) 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.

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.

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.

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?

Being dependent on foreign companies is a security issue. The economic value is more subtle and indirect but it is there

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.

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?

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.

Yea I agree , fair point. Though I think , I would probably study more about france's current system to trust it more but that requires efforts and in general a sense of direction (like which country / politician to even start reading to start to generate trust from reason )

I was more about talking trust from intuition which can then create that sense of direction.

I thank you for creating this comment. I gotta read more about macron to see if he's really how I felt from my intution.

20 years. That's step 1, Demoralization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPsKvG6WMI

That's what I hope too. Trump's failure could be our far-right failure to win the 2027 elections.

It is completely reasonable to see France in that light given recent history of the US - a man who should be in prison for insurrection is the head of the executive.

May I clarify my comment.

Trust was maybe a different word , maybe hope is the correct word ? (but doesn't everybody trust hope)

But I trust the people who can make me hope for a better future by actively not submitting to those people who are actively trying to reduce my hope in better future.

There is absolutely no denying that what Trump has done , has absolutely made many people really hopeless. Such levels of incompetency at a presidential level just feels weird. Its as if nobody is seeing how absurd things are , when you connect everything.

Maybe its me , but this presidency feels like a chaos to me as an outsider / foreigner.

America , as it is right now , is a failed state.

I don't understand , don't we trust countries based on their stability and their stance. Such level of open defiance is what makes me trust france that they are more likely to stand to facts than ahem america.

To be honest , maybe I am being too gloom / sad over america. It feels like the world is shifting towards a russo-american , european , chinese influenceced multi polar world.

What america really hated russia was for are just past wars , but britain and france also had these but they collectively became allies after world war.

May I ask , where in my total arguments , am I sounding unreasonable? I thought it doesn't matter where you read the news , I was able to reason to a pessimist outlook of the trump presidency.

Everything is a propaganda , propaganda literally means something along the lines of sharing your ideas.

Listening to propaganda isn't bad , but blindly advocating for it without reason is bad and dismissing other opinions without reason to fulfill your bias is bad.

If you can really counter my reason , then hey , I can be glad that I don't have to be sad about USA.

Also , I watched a video somewhere that we have a limited amount of (he said "fucks" but in the sense of I give a fuck) things you can care and you have to use it wisely.

I really was giving too much care about USA but I have stopped caring now since its not my country anyway and what power do I really have? Maybe it might be my own fault / I read some things without really applying my own reason.

I am sorry if it offends people but this is my honest opinion America has fallen in my eyes. And there is nothing I can do to change that , so why even care about america?

That looks VERY AWESOME. Really looking forward to try it :)

I’d love to try this out - I signed up for beta access. Looking forward to giving it a shot!

This looks neat! Will the self-hosted binary function in air-gapped environments?

I'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?

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And 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?

This. 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.

Americans are mind-controlled by billionaires. This is not even a question anymore, it is proven by election results.

I'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.