Docs: An Open-Source Notion Alternative Backed by Governments

Ever wished for an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Notion or Confluence that doesn’t lock you into a proprietary ecosystem? Meet Docs, a collaborative note-taking and documentation platform developed by the French and German governments. With 12.8k GitHub stars and growing, this isn’t just another side project—it’s a serious contender for teams that value privacy, scalability, and open-source ethos.

What It Does

Docs is a full-featured wiki and documentation platform built with Django (backend) and React (frontend). It supports real-time collaboration, rich-text editing, and multi-column layouts—think Notion, but with the flexibility to host it yourself. Key features include:

• Markdown-friendly editing with live previews
• Self-hosting via Docker (with detailed guides)
• Multi-language support (thanks to Crowdin integration)
• Export functionality for documents

Why It’s Cool

1. Government-Backed, Community-Driven: Unlike fly-by-night SaaS tools, this project has institutional support but remains open to community contributions (MIT licensed).
2. Dev-Friendly Setup: Recent updates simplified configuration (goodbye, manual env.d edits—hello .env.local).
3. Scalable: Designed for teams, with infrastructure docs covering Keycloak auth, MinIO storage, and proxy setups.

How to Try It

• Live Demo: Check out the official instance at docs.numerique.gouv.fr.
• Self-Host: Clone the repo and run docker-compose up (yes, they’ve modernized to compose.yml). Full guide here.

Final Thoughts

Docs fills a niche for teams that want Notion’s functionality without vendor lock-in. The Django/React stack makes it familiar for web devs to extend, and the active community (see recent PRs) suggests it’s evolving fast. If you’re tired of SaaS docs tools, this might be your next self-hosted hub.

Got thoughts? Hit us up @githubprojects.

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