Open source, owned together
How LaSuite.coop is turning a state-funded digital commons into a cooperative workspace any organisation can own a stake in.
Anyone who has tried to move an organisation off Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 knows the tools are rarely the problem — Nextcloud works, Matrix works, Grist works. The problem is making a dozen separate tools feel like one product, with one login, and someone reliably keeping the lights on when something breaks.
LaSuite.coop solves exactly that, for organisations that cannot solve it themselves. It combines excellent open-source software, a state-funded digital commons, and cooperative ownership that keeps the whole thing accountable to the people who use and build it. We think it is one of the clearest examples of what European tech sovereignty looks like in practice — not a policy aspiration, but a product you can sign up for today. That is why we are featuring it as a flagship Democratic Tech Fund case, and why we want it to inspire communities elsewhere to build and campaign for their own version.
What you actually get
Behind a single sign-on, LaSuite.coop integrates:
Newly built by France’s digital agency, DINUM, as public commons: Notes (collaborative documents), Meet (video conferencing with AI transcripts), and Drive (sovereign file storage), all hosted on certified French infrastructure.
Mature, independently trusted free software, fully integrated: Grist for structured data and lightweight apps, Element/Matrix for encrypted chat, Vaultwarden for shared passwords, and Mailcow for hosted email and calendars.
None of these tools were invented to fill a gap; each is already excellent on its own. LaSuite.coop’s job is integration and care, not reinvention. That is precisely why it works.
A state that builds commons, not licences
Notes, Meet, and Drive were not built by a startup. DINUM, France’s interministerial digital directorate, builds and maintains them as free software commons — open for any government, cooperative, or individual to adopt and adapt, rather than locking the state into proprietary licences. By spring 2026, hundreds of thousands of French public-sector agents use these tools daily; Tchap, the Matrix-based messaging layer, has passed 600,000 registered users. The software ships in rapid 100-day sprints, with visible improvement each cycle.
France did not keep this commons to itself. In November 2025, France and Germany, joined by the Netherlands and Italy, founded the Digital Commons EDIC, a formal EU consortium for jointly developing and governing shared digital infrastructure, launched in The Hague in December 2025. Europe now has three national workspace suites built on this commons logic — LaSuite (France), openDesk (Germany), MijnBureau (Netherlands) — and DC-EDIC’s first projects are “100-Day Challenges” to make them interoperable, so any European public administration can deploy them rather than reinventing the wheel. Crucially, any software jointly developed is released by default under free and open-source licences: sovereignty engineered as commons from the outset.
The missing piece, and the cooperative answer
DINUM builds for French public agents. DC-EDIC coordinates between governments. Neither is designed to onboard a 30-person NGO in Lyon or a tenants’ union in Rotterdam. Open source removes the legal and technical barriers to using this software — it does not, by itself, provide the hosting, support, and care any real organisation needs day to day. As one LaSuite.coop founder put it to us: open source without shared governance is just transparent dependency by another name.
LaSuite.coop fills that gap through a cooperative, so the power stays distributed rather than concentrating in a new vendor. It is being established as a Société Coopérative d’Intérêt Collectif (SCIC), a French legal form requiring multiple stakeholder categories to share governance by law, founded by experienced ethical hosting cooperatives including IndieHosters, Yarl.coop, Algo/Galileo, and Lebureau.coop. Voting power is split so no single group dominates:
| Membership category | Voting share |
|---|---|
| Service operators | 30% |
| Organisational customers | 20% |
| Individual customers | 20% |
| Strategic partners | 20% |
| Supporters | 10% |
The cooperative reinvests a share of revenue back into the upstream commons, and prices by organisation size rather than per seat — a direct rejection of the licensing model that makes Big Tech so hard to leave.
Built to be copied
The single most important design decision behind LaSuite.coop is that it is meant to be replicated. The technical setup, the governance model, and the economics are all published and explained for others to adapt. As one founder told us: “We hope others can try on their side and we can learn together from our mistakes and our successes.”
This is the answer to a question every digital sovereignty advocate eventually faces: how do you build alternatives to Big Tech that don’t just become smaller versions of Big Tech? Not through one heroic European champion, but through an ecosystem of small, accountable cooperatives, each rooted in its own community, drawing from the same well of public and commons infrastructure.
What we want this to inspire
We are featuring LaSuite.coop because we think it should be studied, not just admired. If you can see the shape of a similar cooperative emerging in your own context — built on openDesk, MijnBureau, the Co-op Cloud Federation’s recipes, or any public digital commons near you — we want to help you build the case for it.
The Democratic Tech Fund exists to do this collectively: discovering what already exists, understanding what your community needs, and mobilising funding — seed support, crowdfunding, public-private match funding — to make a credible alternative real. We are not alone in this: we work alongside Commons Network, Goteo, Waag, the Co-op Cloud Federation, eCommons, and others.
Tell us what exists already, what is missing, and what a cooperative alternative could look like where you are.
Get in touch with the Democratic Tech Fund → Support this work via Open Collective →
This story draws on our community call with LaSuite.coop, hosted by the Free Knowledge Institute with the Democratic Tech Fund and the Co-op Cloud Federation. Read the full session report on the FKI website →
Open source without shared governance is just transparent dependency by another name.
