France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Project and Technical Approach

  • France is rolling out “Visio” as part of La Suite Numérique for public-sector video calls, framed as a secure, sovereign tool with guarantees on availability and confidentiality.
  • The stack is largely open source: Visio is built on LiveKit, the suite uses Django, and code is on a public Git hosting platform.
  • The suite also includes sovereign replacements for chat (Tchap), file transfer (FranceTransfert), drive, email, docs, and spreadsheets.
  • Some users report Visio as “fine but below Zoom” (weaker noise cancellation, browser permission friction), others find LiveKit-based solutions easier to run than Jitsi.

Motivations: Sovereignty, Security, and US Dependence

  • Core driver is reducing dependence on US tech (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, US clouds) for state and critical infrastructure.
  • Commenters repeatedly cite the CLOUD Act, sanctions, and recent US behavior (tariffs, NATO rhetoric, Greenland threats, ICC-related actions) as proof the US has and will use an “off switch” on foreign infrastructure.
  • Many argue this is part of a broader shift: sovereign clouds (OVH, Scaleway, Hetzner, etc.), sovereign messaging (Matrix, Tchap), and even sovereign office suites.

Cloud and Infrastructure Challenges

  • Several argue replacing conferencing is “easy”; the hard problem is bootstrapping a hyperscale cloud to rival AWS/Azure/GCP, which require massive capital and usually sit inside larger conglomerates.
  • Others counter that EU providers already offer adequate compute and storage; their main advantages are transparent pricing and lower “gotcha” billing, not breadth of managed services.
  • Hardware dependence (US chips, Chinese manufacturing, Dutch lithography) is seen as a deeper sovereignty bottleneck than videoconferencing software.

Open Source and “Eurostack” Vision

  • Strong sentiment that EU should aggressively fund open-source basics—video, office, storage, OS—rather than proprietary clones.
  • Visio/La Suite are praised for being OSS and contributing upstream; people hope multiple governments will co-fund shared tools (Jitsi, Galene, Nextcloud, LibreOffice, Matrix, etc.).
  • There is frustration that key FOSS apps (especially office suites) still lag commercial products in usability and polish despite decades of work.

Adoption, Network Effects, and Policy Levers

  • Skeptics doubt large-scale abandonment of Teams/Zoom without compelling superiority; others note governments can bypass “pure market” dynamics via mandates and procurement.
  • Proposed levers: require sovereign tools for government, regulated industries, and vendors; enforce interoperability standards; potentially tariff or ban non‑EU systems on national‑security grounds.
  • Some see this as the biggest concrete move yet (outside China/sanctioned states) to unwind US big‑tech dominance—small technically, but symbolically and strategically important.