[paulfitz]

I work at Grist, the "tableur collaboratif" (collaborative spreadsheet) listed on the La Suite homepage. We're in the interesting situation of being both a NYC-based company, and open source software the French gov has adopted and is helping to develop. Grist is mostly a node backend. So it is a complicated story. The key is having code the gov can review and trust and run it on sovereign infrastructure.

Grist https://www.getgrist.com/

A write-up of how the French gov uses it https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...

[yunnpp]

Your position is fantastic because it immediately puts to death all of that nationalistic nonsense about the EU becoming "anti-American" by enforcing privacy laws on US Big Tech etc, when in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin. I might be naive, but your company to me represents a win for free/open software and cross-country collaboration.

That being said, I should ask: to what extent do you see being US-based an advantage or a problem in the current state of things? For example, in regards to exports controls, or any other such thing that may potentially limit your business scope depending on $current_admin.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin.

I don't think it's just that. It's also the increasingly plausible idea that the US government could pressure the EU by actually or threatening to control, throttle or tax EU access to online platforms such as Zoom, Teams, MS Office, Google docs, Azure or AWS.

[jesterson]

> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin

Would you elaborate how this "in fact" is "protecting their citizens' rights"? Very curious to know.

[croon]

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...

> Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.

[jesterson]

I fail to see how that addresses my question

[bratwurst3000]

for example EU privacy laws can be ignored in the states with for example the cloud act. having control over software and infrastructure is protecting the rights of eu citizen in that regard.

[estimator7292]

Microsoft, Google, et al very famously spy on everything you do and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government, regardless of whether the person is a US citizen.

Take this idea one step further. Microsoft, Google, et al also snoop on what foreign governments do with their software and report back to USGov.

[Aurornis]

> and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government,

Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases.

Don’t think that this is a uniquely American property. If your data sits on servers within the control of any company that operates in a country, that country can and will apply legal pressure upon those companies to extract the data.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases.

I'm not sure of your point. This is an excellent argument as to why the French government should run their government videoconferencing and chat on infrastructure in France, as they plan to do, isn't it? Using software that they have vetted. Regardless of if this is a "uniquely American" thing or not.

[Aurornis]

Right. I’m not disagreeing with that. A country should run their official business on tools that aren’t trivially liable for extraction by foreign governments.

The point was in response to the above comment. All governments can and will compel companies to turn over data. It’s often framed on HN as a feature of only American companies but it’s actually universal.

[yunnpp]

That's not the point. Yes, governments are sovereign within their territory. But the US can force any US company to hand over data, regardless of where that company has located the data center.

[sequoia]

wow it reminds me of Microsoft Access, a great piece of software in terms of rapidly building an application!

Does grist have forms?

[dylan604]

I'm not an MS dev type, but I've often seen these forms questions. What made their forms so easy, or more in general what is so complicated about forms that this was even a tool so many liked?

[znhll]

MS Access was on its way out by the time I started working in software, but the simplest explanation I can give about why the "forms" question is this, let's say you're a business person and...:

  * You have a huge Excel document that's basically a DB. (What Access kinda was)
  * You want users to interact with said data document, i.e add record, find/query record(s), edit records
  * You add a "form" for users to do just that. You can also add a "login" form to give some users more permissions.

It's basically if you could turn a SQlite file into a low-coded desktop app.

[p_ing]

Access is an FE for db — JET Red, specifically.

JET Blue aka ESE is currently used by products like Active Directory and Exchange.

[inanutshellus]

With Access, a business doing data entry could -- with a business user not a software engineer -- craft a Form and voila, easy onboarding to train new employees instead of filling out sheets of paper and filing them.

[KellyCriterion]

Access biggest advantage by far was that you could share the file on a network drive and having multiple people accessing it: You didnt need any type of complex backup procedure.

In case of failure, just copy-over the old file from yesterday - such simple solutions are pure gold for SME without any big IT department

[flowerlad]

If you want forms try https://visualdb.com/ it is another tool that aims to be Microsoft Access

[scientism]

https://nocodb.com/ is an open source alternative.

[lateforwork]

It has data corruption issues, see https://visualdb.com/blog/concurrencycontrol/

[mkl]

Not open source though?

[flowerlad]

Right but it is cheaper than open source products if you self-host. Most open source products in this space, including grist, are only partially open source.

[paulfitz]

[grist employee here] Grist forms are open source and were used to keep the toilets clean at FOSDEM just a few days ago https://fosstodon.org/@grist/116001932837956733

Everything you see in our standard docker image is open source. Yes, you can enable and pay for enterprise features too.

[lateforwork]

It is weird that your enterprise features are not self-hostable even if a customer pays. I understand if some features are not open source, but why make it not self-hostable? Self-hosting is a requirement for confidential data.

[gpm]

Form support is touted on the homepage: https://www.getgrist.com/forms/

For what it's worth, which isn't much because this is probably outdated: I remember trying grist a few years ago and leaving mildly unimpressed with form support (I think because I was hoping to have image upload in the forms and that wasn't supported yet).

[paulfitz]

Grist forms support uploads since 2025 https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core/pull/1655

Since it is relevant here: support for uploads was code written by a French contributor, and reviewed by a developer working for the French gov (ANCT/DINUM) and a developer working for Grist Labs. Grist Labs has since maintained and improved on it. The forms feature itself was inspired by an integration built by Camille Legeron at ANCT.

[mentalgear]

Kudos, Grist is great ! Super features, quite seamless only the UI could be more modern (or user stylesheet customizable) if you get to it.

[paulfitz]

Thanks! Fair about styling :). You can bring your own stylesheet https://support.getgrist.com/self-managed/#how-do-i-customiz...