Sounds like a pretty good deal for France to fork US software from 20 years ago, because shit sure hasn't improved much since then.

It definitely has, but it's more that US hardware has advanced incredibly over that time period.

To me this is the point right? Everything that's spent enough time in the oven and has been commodified should be eventually launched as a public service. If we lived in a reasonable world this would be how things are done instead of installing permanent toll booths on everything and letting it get shittier and more expensive.

Doesn't really matter if copycat or not in this case. I'd argue it's even better to be a copycat in order to move faster.

why does it matter if it is difficult? You are right, these systems should be well understood by now. And public domain.

Obviously you've never seen French software, so why pretend like you have?

Counterpoints: Deezer, Doctolib, Back Market, Tidal, Adopte, Mistral, Dassault Systemes (the company behind the two main CAD softwares out there), Thales, Qonto, Kyutai, Mirakl, BeReal, Klaxoon, ABTasty, etc etc. We can do this all day.

Oh, and there are ton of official government open source projects.

And no, "but they're not as big as a FAAG" does not mean that the software isn't good or innovative.