France has been making good moves to achieve software independence from the US. It would be an even better move to allow those in Europe or indeed the rest of the world to also benefit.
The docs project is part of "La Suite"[1]. They choose Grist[2] as the spreadsheet which is made by an American company but open source and there is a significant contribution from the French it admin.
Interesting. By some luck i've been using Grist for two years and it just feels like the most no nonsense software. But it's a bit different to excel, i would say it's more like airtable. It's more columnar like gui over sqlite database which might be a bit more restricting BUT it greatly helps data integrity.
> It would be an even better move to allow those in Europe or indeed the rest of the world to also benefit.
Those initiatives are usually open source. It's just that many times, each country wants to make their own. But it's still better than staying with the TooBigTech monopolies.
> It's just that many times, each country wants to make their own
This hits hard. I'm a French citizen who made an open source alternative to Dropbox [1], I would have never thought my own government to attempt competing in my niche. I did contact the people at DINUM and it seems they are more interested in making their own than contributing to existing projects they don't fully control
On a side note. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for filestash, it is really a high quality software piece that solved a lot of pain points for me.
Qwant is working on that. Together with Ecosia they're building their own index called the European Search Perspective:
"Today, Europe receives 99% of the answers to search queries from external infrastructures. We believe, however, that a higher level of digital sovereignty is essential for a functioning democracy and economy. With our new web index, we are creating a European perspective on politics, culture and values. This is a long overdue step towards more plurality in the digital world, which is also being called for by our society."
> a European perspective on politics, culture and values
To be honest this does not sound much better. 40 years ago maybe I would have preferred EU values over the US' puritan values. Nowadays I'd just expect a different flavor of poison.
Still less, there is a lot of sovereignty-washing in EU, and specifically in France because this gives you access to grants and public markets.
Bpifrance, the Caisse des Dépôts, France 2030, Horizon Europe, etc.
To access that money, you need the right narrative. So companies learn to wrap their pitch in sovereignty language, get the grants, and then quietly build on top of AWS, Azure or GCP.
Not that it's dramatic, but there is a difference between hosted in France (where dependency still exists), and hosted + engineered in France.
Hopefully this transition to Linux is going to push France government to get rid of Crowdstrike, it's insane they let such backdoor run inside.
As a French citizen who's been building an open source Dropbox alternative for almost a decade [1], the sovereignty talk in France makes me cringe. Everyone has the word in their mouth, but nobody bothers to even search for alternatives, let alone give them a chance. France represents about 1% of my customer base with only a single customer: LVMH. I've had a whole bunch of French universities contacting me, nobody was willing to contribute toward the development because culturally we assume libre software must be free of charge so you'd better either beg for grants or have a rich uncle to sponsor your life. I've tried reaching out to the people who talk loud about sovereignty. Turns out it's just something they say at conferences to entertain each other as they have no power to actually make it happen, and don't even get me started on public markets.
There's been some 'back and forth' or "progress and regress' about this.
Adoption of Free Software:
2012 Prime Minister circular — the most important formal turning point: Orientations pour l'usage des logiciels libres dans l'administration, signed on 19 September 2012. It explicitly gave guidance to public administrations on free software use.
2016 Digital Republic Law — reinforced the direction by encouraging public administrations to use free software and open formats.
2021 action plan for Free Software and Digital Commons — launched after the Prime Minister’s circular of 27 April 2021, with goals to increase awareness, use, publication of source code, and reuse across administrations.
2024–2026 LaSuite / Suite Numérique — current state-led open-source collaboration suite, presented by DINUM as a coherent set of open-source tools for public agents and positioned as part of the state’s sovereignty strategy
Rollbacks and proprietary deals
Microsoft “Open Bar” contract with the Ministry of Defence / Armed Forces — a major counterexample. The Senate records say the framework agreement started in 2009 and was renewed for 2013–2017 and 2017–2021, without publicity or competition, giving the ministry broad access to Microsoft’s catalog.
Criticism and replacement with UGAP purchasing — later reporting says the open-bar arrangement ended in February 2021 and was replaced by a convention via UGAP, but the ministry still relied on broad Microsoft licensing and associated services.
2025 education procurement for Microsoft — a public tender worth 74 million euros for the Ministry of Education and higher education services was attributed to Microsoft, showing that proprietary dependence continued alongside open-source policy.
2025–2026 public-private partnerships in sovereignty language — France and Germany announced a partnership with Mistral AI and SAP for sovereign AI in public administration, which is not a free-software rollback in the strict sense, but it is a clear example of the state pursuing sovereignty through private-sector partnerships rather than purely internal open-source development.
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Conclusion:
Like anything in capitalism: it's a constant fight, permanent struggle. The big private companies will try to massively impact political life.
So, there IS in France this 'feeling', this consciousness, throughout the political landscape (mostly on the left and also a little bit on the right) that we need to have some sovereignty over our data, services, software, etc.
Every once in a while, a right-side political figure, who are basically ruling since 2000, (except from 2012-2017 where France had a social-democratic government and president) has a sparkle of dignity, decency, logic, and honesty towards the best interests of the country and leans towards Free Software adoption. But...the lobbies are always there to rollback each decision, or part of each decision, and gradually gain back their influence.
>a right-side political figure, who are basically ruling since 2000, (except from 2012-2017 where France had a social-democratic government and president)
As a French citizen who spent almost a decade building an alternative to Dropbox that's libre software [1] I was very disappointed my own country decided to build a product competing with mine when French companies are about 1% of the existing customer base. I would have never thought my own government would be competing on my niche
It makes sense a government will want to take full charge of the strategically important software they will run on especially when they try to establish it as a new standard in a challenging transition. One day when it's fully established they could still spin it off and some other entity takes point.
Plus, it's all open source, so the rest of the world is free to use it as well!