Docs is a new open-source collaborative text editor, intended as an alternative to Notion, Google Docs, Outline, and other similar web-based services. Interestingly, the project is being led by the governments of France and Germany.
Docs is a web-based collaborative writing tool, with the ability for multiple people to view and edit the same page simultaneously. Apple Pages and Microsoft Word have simultaneous editing capabilities, but new changes can sometimes take several seconds to show up for all editors, which isn’t great for real-time collaboration. The base version of LibreOffice doesn’t support online document editing at all, though the LibreOffice-based Collabora Online suite does have it.
The site for Docs explains, “Docs offers an intuitive writing experience. Its minimalist interface favors content over layout, while offering the essentials: media import, offline mode and keyboard shortcuts for greater efficiency.”
You can create new documents, then share them with individual people or create public links for viewing and/or editing, just like other cloud services. Documents can also be exported to PDF, Microsoft Word format, or OpenDocument format (ODF).
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You can try out Docs in the public test environment, and it’s open-source on GitHub, so you can spin it up on your own server using an S3-compatible storage service. Under the hood, Docs is powered by the popular Django, Next.js, and MinIO web frameworks.
Docs is a joint development effort between France’s Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) and Germany’s Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration (ZenDiS). Both agencies have the goal of funding and organizing digital projects that improve digital sovereignty, and Docs is built primarily as a tool for local agencies and companies.
- Simple collaborative editing without the formatting complexity of markdown
- Offline? No problem, keep writing, your edits will get synced when back online
- Create clean documents with limited but beautiful formatting options and focus on content
- Built for productivity (markdown support, many block types, slash commands, keyboard shortcuts).
- Save time thanks to our AI actions (generate, sum up, correct, translate)
- Collaborate with your team in real time
- Granular access control to ensure your information is secure and only shared with the right people
- Professional document exports in multiple formats (.odt, .doc, .pdf) with customizable templates
European countries and agencies have been some of the highest-profile users of LibreOffice and other similar free software projects, so it’s not a surprise to see more active involvement in that area. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein just moved from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice across its 30,000 government computers, for example.
Support for European owned-and-operated tech services and infrastructure is growing, and we could see more projects like Docs over the coming months and years, especially in areas where American products and services are still dominant. Microsoft, Google, and Notion Labs are all based in the United States.
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Docs is part of France’s La Suite numérique (“the digital suite”), which is also working on an open-source video conferencing service called Visio. It’s also open-source on GitHub and self-hostable, and claims “Zoom-level performance with high-quality video and audio.”
Source: French Government via Chris Adams (Mastodon)
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