Autonomic launch docs.coop - Co-operativley hosted open source document editing

Technology Software
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Hey folks, I’m just going to post our press release here:

Autonomic co-operative are thrilled to announce our new project:

Docs.coop

Building on the great work of Suite Numerique, we are offering an opportunity to be part of a new collaborative Docs platform as a service, that provides an ethical alternative to Google Docs, Office 365, Notion etc.

Docs is the result of a joint effort lead by the French :baguette_bread: (DINUM) and German :pretzel: (ZenDiS) governments which represents a paradigm shift in the way open source software is funded.

It’s early days and the project is still in beta but we have published an early version of a @coopcloud recipes (coop-cloud/lasuite-docs: A collaborative note taking, wiki and documentation platform that scales. - lasuite-docs - Co-op Cloud Code) that makes it easier to deploy Docs for smaller organisations (the La Suite deployment has apparently approx 15,000 users).

We are offering managed Docs instances with full support provided by us. Hosted in the EU by a worker owned tech co-operative. Docs supports oauth for full integration in your existing infrastructure.

No bosses, no CEOs and we pay all our taxes.

There are some missing features as the upstream project is still in beta, however we feel with the sustainable funding model the project has, it’s only going to get better and better.

The main features that are coming soon that you need to know about are:

  • No document import (you’d have to copy and paste)
  • No sub-folders (it’s one big list of documents)

Here is their road-map: Docs - La Suite · GitHub

Here is our TODO list: https://git.coopcloud.tech/coop-cloud/

This is a fully open source and welcoming community.

If you are interested in testing a docs.coop instance, please get in touch: boop @ autonomic . zone

We can’t offer the same loss leader mega scale prices as the U.S. tech mega corps but we do offer full control and privacy over your tech services and a thriving co-operative and public sector partnership that is tackling one of the most pressing missing tools in the open source ecosystem.

Here’s a screenshot of the interface for those who want a quick peak:

Screenshot 2025-06-10 at 15-24-25 Docs
Screenshot 2025-06-10 at 15-24-25 Docs1314×774 80.5 KB

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Wow fantastic!

I’d love to try it out, can I have access to a testing instance?

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That’s coming soon, standby. Our friend @BillySmith helped us get this going so there’s currently only a private testing instance for one of Billy’s projects Sensorica. It’s still very early days.

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I’ve only been working with Sensorica for the last couple of years, but they’ve been going since 2014. We use the same principles used for FLOSS development, but work on Open-Source HardWare designs. :smiley:

One of the problems that we currently have is being too reliant on the Google tech-stack.

Decisions based on cost 11 years ago, and we are now stuck with the technical-debt of “Digital Monoculture.” :neutral_face:

Hence, my interest in trying different service providers.

The funding model for developing the Suite Numerique software is also an interesting approach, as Sensorica uses similar-but-different routes to fund hardware development. :smiley:

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Hi folks, we have received feedback about the pricing for our docs.coop instance hosting.

We have decided to drop the price to 30 GBP per month for a small Docs instance.

This comes with an Single Sign On oauth server (such as Keycloak or Authentik).

We think this represents excellent value and will hopefully be enough to support us making this exciting open source Google docs competitor available for the people.

We can offer additional paid support on top of this to integrate further into your existing infrastructure.

Unlock collaborative document editing without the oligarchs

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Jumping ahead of the game - I wonder if Autonomic is thinking also about the remainder of le Suite, out of which Docs is taken. In the context of the project I mentioned, I’m interested in the whole of it - the messaging, the matrix comms architecture (I would SO like a better client than Element!), the single sign-on; even a better spreadsheet!

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Hi @kawaiipunk I’m new here. But you know me (mike hales) from direct connections with Autonomic. I Joined bcos I need to know more about the launch of the Docs service.

Discourse forbids me to @ mention Billy Smith too, in my first post! Hi Billy, you know me in Mastodon/social.coop.

I’m into a new initiative (not launching for some months yet and under wraps a bit, but drawing on learning from meet.coop) in which it would be great to have use of Docs for collaborative writing - and for publishing too, it seems. The UI looks nice and clean, and to routinely create min-wikis in the word processor (via sub-docs) would be a fantastic improvement over linear documents.

Reach me here, mail or mastodon?

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@BillySmith @kawaiipunk
I need to talk about the rollout of Docs, urgently. @wouter and I are in a project that needs

  • a really good oFLOSS co-authoring platform, now
  • with a clean UI, which also will
  • write linked docs in a a publicly readable ‘knowledge base’ And hopefully
  • navigate, link & retrieve well in the documentation base, via a nice nav sidebar!

If Docs is still in in beta, might we join the beta phase?

Apologies for cross posting, also in in the fediverse.

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