Firefox, VLC, Gimp, KeePass, LibreOffice among open source software endorsed by French Government

EU and its contries are pro open source and I fucking love it.
- Yeah I'm going to find a European and suck his dick right now!
  
  .....and.....and I am going to find a European girl and suck her nipples for as long as she wants.
  
  Why hello there
  
  Fr if anyone in the EU wants to host me I'll be your (32m,pan,switch,cd) live-in maid while I job hunt. Please inquire within.
  
  Hallo
  
  I'm ready.
- Haven't they also been trying to put back doors into everything for the last decade?
  
  EU is democratic, which also means everyone can propose a law. Never have EU put a backdoor into anything, but its true that there have been law proposals for it.
  Never voted through.
- I wonder if we could get EU to take over some states if we got enough votes to secede in some areas.
  
  EU could potentially make a group category like for Norway or Switzerland, and then take in other countries all around the world to cooperate more and stand together with the EU on some issues.
  Canada would be a great candidate. Maybe even Australia, but I dont really know anything about their politics.

😍 they know the good stuff
- Nobody should ever use the internet without uBlock Origin.
  
  Friends don’t let friends surf unprotected.
  
  But also, I'd like we should be able to use internet without having to use uBlock Origin...
  
  Its super scary that there are many people not using it.

I am so stoked and appreciative to see so many great projects underway in the EU. Bad for the US right now but good in the long run.
- It's good for the US, too.
  Americans don't have to live under the bootheels of corporations.

To be clear. This is a government agency endorsing the software as safe and effective. So bureaucrats and employees can't be reprimanded they use them.
This isn't the French Prime Minister announcing the country will cancel Microsoft Office subscriptions and build a fund to support FOSS projects. Gimp has nowhere near the ressources they actually need.
- VIM..? Safe..?!
  
  Once you start Vim, you don't even need to activate the lock screen when you leave your desk. Ain't no-one going to be using that machine for anything nefarious any more.
- It's still nice! A bit of recognition, legitimacy, and although it's not funding, it might be a small step towards it. I see many great works, that stand tall on their own. More eyes will only make them shine even brighter.
  Thanks, Fr*nce.

An open source package that would replace adobe would be a game changer.
- Which Adobe?
  
  The building style?
- Gimp/inkscape
  
  I wonder how Scribus is doing these days.
- Krita ?
- I would sacrifice my first unborn kid for this.
  
  I would also sacrifice your first unborn kid for this.
  
  People really would rather sacrifice their unborn child than pay $20 a month smh.
- Worth noting: Affinity, while not open-source, can be brought to run under Linux. This may be helpful for people wanting to ditch Windows.
  
  Does it run well? Ps under Wine is a laggy and unstable mess

Do they also fund these projects?
- They are not only no funding but largely not using it in practice and letting most public institution spent billions in Microsoft Office 365 contract
- Probably a lot like the actual users of (F)OSS: Not really :p

The full list: https://code.gouv.fr/sill/list
Hold on. That page does not list VLC or KeePass. Is there more info about this other than the list? Or is the info in the title of this post incorrect?
[edit]
I see now. The page does not list VLC or KeePass, but those two both do come up if you put them into the search box. The software listed on the page is a very long list, but it is apparently on the 'most popular' stuff - not the entire list. (Although it is strange to see a heap of niche stuff, and stuff I've never heard of on the 'most popular' list while VLC doesn't make the cut.)
I'm not sure this list is a very strong endorsement by the French Government. It seems to just be listing free software options, and then asking other people to sign up to say which ones they use.
- Probably due to it being a media player vs a list of productivity apps?
  I feel like most would forget about VLC until they notice the traffic cone is missing.
- Using the find function on my phone browser doesn't find it but it does come up when manually scrolling and as long as you don't move too far the find works. I'm thinking there is some sort of rendering magic going on, would explain why scrolling is so fast.

I’m surprised FF got in with that bunch. Most of them are truly uncompromising OSS projects. Like WINE for example.
FF skirts A LOT of corporate influence…
- Firefox offers a real alternative to chrome derivatives. I think it’s what we need to go for too.
  
  Yeah I use it on Linux and prefer it over Chrome (even the variants people swear are “de-googled”) but do recognize it’s more of an enemy of my enemy kind of deal. I don’t like a lot of things FF does as it does have a corporate division to answer to. And they want money.
- I started using Cromite with OpenXNG as my search engine and it's been good. A de-googled chromium essentially with built in privacy/ad blockers.

The SILL About page translated explains the list :
https://code.gouv.fr/sill/readme
Why this catalog?
The socle interministériel de logiciels libres (SILL) is the reference catalog of open-source software recommended by the French government for use throughout the administration.
This catalog helps administrations find their way around the open-source software they are encouraged to use, in line with Article 16 of the French Law for a Digital Republic

Redis is also on the list, but not Valkey. Gitea is on the list, but not Forgejo. Still nice to see governments endorsing the open-source-ish software they know and FOSS principles, though!
- I imagine the list will be dynamic. Those projects might be on a list somewhere, just haven't been vetted yet by their standards. Start with the source projects, then dive through the forks.
- To be fair, I know redis and gitea (barely, gitlab is way more popular) and not the other two. Enterprise support and name recognition are quite important for government usage.
  
  Valkey was created recently as Redis changed their license, having clauses which made the user choose between being “discriminatory against users of the software that use proprietary software within their stack, as the license requires the open-sourcing of every part interacting with the service, which under these circumstances might not be possible” or being non-commercial. Forgejo was created when Gitea decided to go the JetBrains route a few years ago. It’s since absorbed Gitea’s clout.

That's kind of quote cool for a government to do IMO.

Hopefully the French will also endorse Fedora, Red Hat, and Valve's SteamOS. Microsoft is a huge security issue, since it isn't clear whether MS would bend to DOGE's whims. The NLRB and other aspects of the US government had DOGE set up accounts, which were accessed within 15 minutes by Russia.
- Why Steam OS? It does what it sets out to do, and probably makes Valve a ton of money.
  Donations should go to projects that need it. Valve seems to be doing fine.
  
  Making an OS easy to use in everyday life is the key to mass adoption. If the EU wants to get away from Microsoft's garden, that means advertising valid options to people who aren't attuned to Linux.
  Money isn't the issue for SteamOS, it is awareness and making it available as an pre-installed option on consumer PCs. The EU could create standardized pamphlets about Fedora, Red Hat, and SteamOS, mandating stores to present that digestable information to consumers so that they know what flavor is best for their usecase.
- Why RedHat? I thought it's a bad version of Linux and generally disliked (similar to Broadcom and ESXi).
  Why not prefer something based on Debian. As it's being regarded as very stable I don't feel like it would interfere with the employees daily job as they don't need a cutting edge distro like arch.
  
  So, I love Debian, and it's an excellent distro.
  But personally something like suse makes more sense, it's more user friendly and is so German it's painful.
  
  Or why not SUSE? I forget who owns it now, but at least for a while it was owned by an EU firm.
  
  Linux isn't very good for the casual person at this time, due to conflicting, dated, or missing documentation. If people are to be encouraged to adopt Linux, it should be toward distributions that have official technical support.
- on another note.. Microsoft export their software and OS to almost every one of our users' pc while US doesn't buy any of our OS. Using Trump logic of fairness, we need to tariff US, to balance the trade deficit.

The "english" setting does nothing.
- just the way the French like it
  
  If they really want to boil our piss, put "English (American)" as the only option. Or or, a little American flag next to "English". Oo, I'm engaging myself right now.
- It changes the UI text of the website, such as filters, titles, and sorting options, but not the descriptions.
  I can't decide which is worse, a functioning language switch that never included English for the descriptions (which is the only text I actually need translated) or a broken language switch. The way it switches languages is also quite odd, as if it's asking, 'Are you sure?'"

DuckDuckGo as a web browser?
- On android at least, yes there is a duck duck go browser.

The first thing any government should do is move away from ms office.
The 2nd thing they should do is fund and contribute to a distro and begin the transition from windows.

based!

That's cool, I hope ONLYOFFICE gets some love one day too. I vastly prefer the GUI at least in the word processor. Also open source.
note I'm only using it for writing, can't speak to the rest of the suite
- Not judging the software at all, but the fact that OnlyOffice is owned/developed by a semi-sketchy Russian corporation would probably preclude it from getting any endorsement from a Western government.
  
  Cryptpad (which partly uses onlyoffice), writes about it here: https://forum.cryptpad.org/d/232-onlyoffice-concerns-vendor-makes-shady-moves/4
  I think it's an excellent post worth reading. Open Source entails collaborating with the whole world. Any code base is simply to big to audit from the start, but all incremental code can be audited, and you can disable stuff you don't need etc.
  For me, the post makes me trust cryptpad more than I did before.
  And yes. Cryptpaf = onlyoffice, but still relevant I think
  Edit: spelling of "worth"
  
  Didn't know that :/ Hmm might switch myself then and delete my recc.
- It is endorsed, though?

Great choices. I use all of them.

Well, that's just about as good news as can be in the current tech climate, in particular considering programs like VLC and KeePass are getting this visibility.

Once upon a time, there was Glimpse project—which for me was a nice enhancement to vanilla GIMP. They sadly kicked the bucket but damn not a day goes by where I don't miss them...
- Better name too

Surprised to see docker there after the rugpull they did some time ago.
- What are you referring to?
  
  They started charging money for Docker Desktop for companies and they have been adding pull limits on Docker Hub.

EU governments are probably the only path to mainstream adoption for desktop Linux. If they all did it and invested in the features they needed, it could provide a valid option for mainstream office use.

Sweet I'm already using PostgreSQL because it's the only thing Blynk supported!