In previous "sovereignty spotlights," I covered topics such as our private chat conversations, and meeting data. There are many types of data to consider when we talk about digital sovereignty, and perhaps the most obvious is our documents. The big-tech players here are familiar: Microsoft Office/365 and Google Docs. These companies have a great deal of control over our basic documents and most often we have no idea where the data is even located.
The long time open source alternative to these is LibreOffice which is a feature rich and mature software package that I have been using for many years. It is also compatible with Microsoft documents and other formats.
But what about that online document editing experience? You're at your desk and started writing a document, then on the go pull out your laptop at a cafe and want to seamlessly continue working on it. You want to use the cloud but don't want the foreign big tech options? Well check out this new tool, built in Canada for Canadians: cDox!
And with an easy to remember URL: https://cdox.ca
The cDox UI is simple and works well. In fact I am writing this article using it. Docs are private by default but easy to make public. It has everything you need for basic document editing and new features keep being added (see the "What's New" link on the site). But the best part is that it is all hosted in Canada and controlled by a Canadians. There is no US company involved in the service or the data, plus your data is not used for AI training.
How did this new tool emerge? It's a passion project by a developer named Barry Lachapelle who describes his thinking in an article Why I'm Building cDox.
The small-tech ethos of cDox is refreshing and inspiring. Personally, I would love to see more small projects like this. I don't know how we can break free from the huge tech companies dominance and their billions of dollars available to keep their power. But I think small tech is part of the path forward towards a digital sovereign Canada.
With small tech in the cloud, the sky's the limit!