From LibreOffice to « La Suite » - providing civil servants with Free Software sovereign tools
The history of Free Software in the French public administration can be told by drawing a timeline that we can call “From LibreOffice to La Suite”. Back in the 2000s, some pioneers in the French administration experimented with StarOffice, then OpenOffice, then convinced their hierarchy to deploy OpenOffice/LibreOffice massively, even publishing an official build adapted to the needs of French ministries. The free software policy was then reinforced in various ways, two of which were the launch of the BlueHats movement in 2018 and the creation of an Open Source Programme Office in 2021. Now DINUM is focusing on putting open source at the heart of “La Suite”, its digital workplace for civil servants, working closely with other European member states such as Germany. Of course, history is not linear and new things do not completely replace old ones: where are we now? Who is using LibreOffice? Who is using La Suite? How do these two stories fit into the larger story of Free Software in the French public sector?