the French and German governments open sourced this month a software to replace Notion

github.com/suitenumerique/docs
And there are more
lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr

GitHub - suitenumerique/docs: A collaborative note taking, wiki and documentation platform that scales. Built with Django and React. Opensource alternative to Notion or Outline.

A collaborative note taking, wiki and documentation platform that scales. Built with Django and React. Opensource alternative to Notion or Outline. - suitenumerique/docs

^GitHub

I really was hoping that European governments would wake up, but then...

next.ink/175788/leducation-nat…

French ministry of education just signed a 74 millions euros deal (at least) with Microsoft for the next three years.

Governments are dumb.

L’Éducation nationale signe pour au moins 74 millions d'euros de solutions et services Microsoft - Next

Le ministère de l’Éducation nationale et de la jeunesse vient d’attribuer le marché public qui vise à équiper ses services centraux et les établissements supérieurs en solutions Microsoft, des postes client aux datacenters.

^{Alexandre Laurent (Next)}

Absolutely! There are interesting funding opportunities that, frankly, get underexposed.

Are you familiar with @nlnet ? Their core business is to support organisations and people who contribute to an open internet, by funding projects and making available a slew of services. I have collaborated with them in a couple of projects, which has been an excellent experience.

yes to all you said + Please not only fund but also use the result and make that success visible to the public. Make them/us aware. Otherwise the money is wasted.
Fund a tool or project and use it. Make the people that they want to benefit from the possibilities.

Examples (maybe they are bad but the idea should become clear.)
Fund Matrix and Element and use it for communication with a doctor, announcement of traffic jam or emergency notifications bla bla. Create good use cases.

I'll call you Jason "viable alternative" Slaughter from now on 🤪

Just kidding. I agree 100% . We need viable alternatives in many more areas, beyond software and transportation.

So true. Shout out to NLnet: they are doing some great work here, funding both immediate and longer-term OSS projects. Anyone can apply!

nlnet.nl/project/current.html

I am part of a group of experienced IT people that have experience in building cloud platforms (a la aws / azure etc).

We'd LOVE ❤️ to build a NON-profit, European created & operated public cloud and only charge for costs... (since we don't like the idea of yet another big tech firm squeezing money from people)

Problem is that we have no clue where to even get started with support from government or Europe.... which we'd need because I doubt we'd get VC funding. 😋

I think there's probably a case for some software not being open source. It does let your adversaries have a look at code running on all your important stuff. The more is automated and such in your infrastructure the more impact a zero-day could have.

Your government should own the code though, or be able to look at and audit it. That's a must. It's nuts to buy something from some company that might have a shutoff in it.

When possible though it should be open source.

What assurance do you have that those governments won't pick really inefficient, cumbersome-to-maintain, bogged-down-with-complexity OpenSource projects, which get mired in problems down the road - BUT have the virtue of having more bells and whistles (conveniences, simplifications) that the end users will like?

Do those governments have incentive to pick the mature, lean-and-mean #OpenSource choices, which have less bells and whistles, -OR- the bloated, cumbersome, Johhny-come-lately Open Source choices, *with more end-user convenience*, and are likely to run way over budget in the longer term? I predict they'll choose the second kind of choice, in a short-sighted, desperate attempt to bring the most convenience to the end users. And it'll bog down in a few years - being really hard to maintain and support; the project being a failure. They'll return back to closed source in a few years - *and thereby get all the end-user convenience they were wanting all along*, realizing they have to pay for it.

the European parliament has had a Digital Sovereignty Think Tank for some years:

europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/e…

I think the problem for them has been the same as for everyone: there has not been a really strong motive to move away from the very mature and quite convenient US-based services.

Unfortunately, that opens up new problems. There was some news article recently about third party companies (lacking in-depth nowledge about the software) claimed support contracts with goverment institutions and grabbed tax money, while the actual developers of open source software were largely left out.

The article (german, paid article): heise.de/news/Wie-Behoerden-un…

Wie Behörden und ihre Auftragnehmer Open-Source-Software ausbeuten

Wenn Behörden auf freie Software umsteigen, beauftragen sie oft Trittbrettfahrer – zum Schaden etablierter Anbieter und des Steuerzahlers.

^{Christian Wölbert (heise online)}

yes, but also read @bert_hubert on that: berthub.eu/articles/posts/open… and also berthub.eu/articles/posts/mani… (in Dutch only), want “de open tech scene heeft echt een wakeup call nodig.”

Yes, indeed. Serious government funding would help. See what nlnet.nl/foundation/can_do.htm… is already doing for example.

Manifest Big Tech Alternatieven: Wat moet er beter - Bert Hubert's writings

Onze samenleving en overheid draaien inmiddels grotendeels op Amerikaanse big-tech platformen. Velen van ons willen dat dit minder wordt, of zelfs ophoudt.

^{Bert Hubert's writings}

Hey, you may have influenced my YouTube algorithm; this was in my top recs just now: youtube.com/watch?v=Bu3S2A02FF…

It's a reaction to/review of eupolicy.social/@eu_os/1141153… and eu-os.gitlab.io

EU OS

Proof-of-Concept OS for the EU

^{EU OS Proof-of-Concept}

This is totally related to the motto Public Money, Public Code of @fsfe

fsfe.org/news/2025/news-202503…

FSFE symposium: Public Money? Public Code! in practice - FSFE

Free Software is indispensable for public authorities to overcome dependencies and achieve technological sovereignty. Therefore, the need of the hour is "P...

^{FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe}

with some of their wording, I was a bit worried that this would allow the Fedi Mafia/HOA/Fedi Gatekeepers to harass devs and simply stop people like us from calling them out by linking to them.

Thankfully, a dev said they currently aren't thinking of tying "linking a post" to quote posts.

Their wording made it come off that way because that's how Threads does Quote Posts.

If you're on Threads and wanna link to another post, it's automatically a quote post. Someone limits who can quote post? You're not linking to their post.

Obviously even if they did that, it wouldn't effect you because you're on Akkoma, but it did have me worried for a bit.😬

@tchambers
“To those who believe quote posts are abusive, there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse. “

there is no conclusive data; that’s not the same as saying there is no data whatsoever….