W is a SWEDISH startup funded by private entities.
It has absolutely nothing to do with France, and the only link you could make here is it’s owned at 25% by a media that received subsidies from the EU, like a lot of media do, and France is part of the EU.
The startup has not been endorsed by any public entity at any level.
This is completely irrelevant.
This tool is developed for France’s administration, not for the public. They host the servers. So I don’t think e2ee is indeed a requirement.
France uses Tchap: a Matrix server, and this is to integrate a videoconf system, and it’s based on LiveKit. So they do use available solutions.
Well, I wish you could just say that, but “the French” is not a consistent body of people.
While we have this team working on a sovereign suite, Macron is rushing a law to ban <15 years old on social network, so… they will soon require all users to provide an ID. It will have to go through a “trusted third-party”, not directly to Meta/Twitter/etc., and not to the gov directly, but we all know how much corporates and governments have been trustworthy historically. And once the data is collected, you’re just one law away from all abuse.
Needless to say that the teen will rush to VPN, so they also mentioned a potential ban on VPNs! (France would then join the short-list of great democratic VPN-banning countries: North Korea, China, Iran…)
The development is quite transparent. The team is looking at reduced development and more integration, so instead of “pouring money on a project”, they tried various solutions, and picked the “best one”.
One criteria was an integration with their internal communication system: Tchap, essentially a Matrix server. The Matrix video call group didn’t cut it because it requires ElementX, and apparently there are unresolved issue there (no idea if it’s the app itself or due to customization of their Matrix server). They ended up with Visio, that is not a “new” solution: it’s based on LiveKit.
They can’t take your money but they can bury you into the ground and use you as an example so that no one ever tries to do the same thing. Ever heard of Aaron Schwartz?
Look, no offense, but had you check the github Readme, or the previous comments, as it is mentioned several times, and you would have found that it is just an integration of LiveKit in their internal communication system, called Tchap, and Tchap is just a customized non-federated Matrix server.
No wheel reinvented.