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Readit Newsvirdev commented on Docs Hackathon in Paris 2nd and 3rd of june hackdays2025.fr/... · Posted by u/virdev
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virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
Does 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.
Hey! Docs’s PM here.
IMO Notion really made an awesome job with real-time, collab features (comments, suggestions) and useful AI actions. So much, people only see databases ^^.
For now we’ll be focusing on these. That’s already plenty ^^ Further down road we’ll if we manage to take on databases.
virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
That'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.
Hey 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.
virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
I 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.
Hey! The Netherlands joined recently. Let’s hope more countries follow
virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
Did you consider building on top of some existing open source solutions like Docmost, Appflowy, or AFFiNE?
Hey, we dedided to take an approach where we build on top of libraries like BlockNotejs, Yjs, HocusPocus but build our own wrapper around it in Django and Next.js. This allows to iterate really fast and to catter our own need (we are large organizations we don't have the same as startups or SMEs).
Contributing and sponsoring allows us to make improvement that help the whole collaborative software category.
virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
Not a Docs question, but I recently came across Grist and I see that Grist is actually listed as a project under la Suite Numerique. On the other hand, Grist Labs (getgrist.com/about) claim to be the developers, are based in the US (NYC), and I couldn't see any mention any EU collaboration on their website. What is the connection here? How does it differ from the governance and funding model of Docs?
I love that you guys are building a suite of next-gen tools rather than just recreating LibreOffice. Seems really smart to me!
> The French government agency ANCT Données et Territoires has also made significant contributions to the codebase.
From the Grist-core readme : https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core
virdev commented on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline github.com/suitenumerique... · Posted by u/maelito
Hi, thanks for the project and contributing a nice European alternative to Outline.
I had a few questions relating to Docs as it seems a nice alternative I want to integrate in our company.
- Is it a project funded directly by the Governments or by the NGI funds?
- Is there an extensibility via plugins or other in the future thought for integrations ?
- Is the ProConnect the only way or can one use a self-hosted OIDC or another IdP to login?
Hey! Thanks for your interest.
It's directly funded by the governments.
BlockNotejs (the library doing the editor bit) received some funding from NGI.
And now France and Germany are sponsoring the project (and also Yjs)
No plugins plans for now.
You can use your self-hosted OIDC, when you run the project locally you'll see a Keycloak as first screen.
Let us know if you get it running docs@numerique.gouv.fr would love to hear your feedback as a reuser.