European tech firms will ship the first stable release of Euro-Office next month, giving governments and businesses worldwide a ready-to-run, sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs.
  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    43 minutes

    Countries outside of the US are sick and tired of paying for what they see as untrustworthy American-dominated software-as-a-service (SaaS).

    SJVn is so hit-and-miss for tech clue, but this resonated.

    Canada is a country outside of the US. Can we get on the notion of independence and digital sovereignty yet, or are we still gonna chain our junk flotilla to this Titanic? And when it goes down, will Millhouse still be complaining about how slow we sink?

  • ataraxya@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3 hours

    if only there was a good, actively developed and highly regarded free and open source alternative whose name would be something like “LibreOffice”…

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 hours

      I like and use Libreoffice, but its a local application. This makes it fine for working by yourself and on your own hardware. Google Docs (Gstuite) is an online application with the best collaboration integration I’ve seen and works on nearly any device you can open a modern browser on. Yes, both products have a word processor and a spreadsheet, but they don’t serve all the same use cases.

      If this new Euro-office can replicate the Gsuite offerings (that Libreoffice lacks), then Euro-office could be a great addition to the open source community.

      • pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1 hour

        Nah this new Euro-Office is literally a OnlyOffice fork according to their GitHub. It’s much closer in comparison to LibreOffice than Google docs.

        They have worked with NextCloud to make Euro-Office an app/add-on (I forget what NextCloud calls them specifically) from this release (v1.0), so that they can integrate with a platform that already… Has this feature (with Collabora office), but hey… The more the merrier.

        • chirospasm@lemmy.mlEnglish
          49 minutes

          Although straightforward, I appreciate they didn’t reinvent the wheel here – Nextcloud plus OnlyOffice is a solid combo to replace the MS365- and Gsuite-like product lines.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 hours

          You’re proving my point. They just started working on it 3 months ago. It will be a long time, if ever, before it is a Gsuite replacement. They even said they tried this a few years ago and abandoned it. There’s a risk they’d do it again.

          So if there’s another open source effort specifically focused on an online product, its a good thing.

        • BakedCatboy@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1 hour

          Is cryptpad able to open existing docx files? Last time I checked I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I mostly need to edit word documents that people send me, and send them back the same format.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 hours

      Pretty sure it uses Collabora, which is literally LibreOffice source code in a web shell.

      Edit: just checked, they are using OnlyOffice as a base instead of the already European Collabora. Strange choice but so be it.

    • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3 hours

      Looks like this is going to be a browser based suite with online collaboration, more like Google docs than Microsoft office.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        24 minutes

        Would only be interested if there’s a local version as well that can turn syncing on or off. A purely web based office suite is unappealing.

  • ozoned@piefed.socialEnglish
    2 hours

    Looks like it’s powered by NextCloud? If so, that’s FOSS funding that we all win!

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1 hour

      NextCloud is a contributor, I believe the screenshot they’re using is to show that Euro-Office can be used as an integration/app in NextCloud as of now.

      Euro-Office seems based mostly on OnlyOffice if I’m reading their source page correctly. It’s a competor to LibreOffice more than a whole platform.

    • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
      1 hour

      Euro-Office seems to have been directly forked from ONLYOFFICE. With that said, the Nextcloud team are some of the core contributors.

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
    3 hours

    i remember hearing this is just a rebrand of onlyoffice, is there something interesting about it (from a technical pov)?

    • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
      1 hour

      https://github.com/Euro-Office

      Euro-Office liberates the ONLYOFFICE code base

      Euro-Office is based on the ONLYOFFICE Open Source, an AGPL codebase. This code base is being extensively reviewed and cleaned up, with the goal of making it easy to build and contribute to. Why did we resort to a fork, rather than collaborate? Of course, forking should be a last resort. Unfortunately, open collaboration with ONLYOFFICE was not possible, for a number of reasons:

      • Contributing is impossible or greatly discouraged. ONLYOFFICE typically does not review or accept pull requests. Build instructions are unreliable, outdated or just plain broken.
      • The company regularly makes controversial decisions like closing off features in the mobile apps like mobile editing, and the removal of an administrator panel.
      • Lacking transparency. Commit messages, when visible, often just refer to an issue number in an internal issue tracker. There are quite a number of binary blobs and compiled or obfuscated code blobs. Most internal code comments are Russian which makes is hard to work with.
      • The mobile apps are not really open source but just wrappers. Example. The apps have extensive proprietary sections which will need to be re-implemented. Work on this is underway.
      • ONLYOFFICE is a Russian company (despite many attempts to hide this), and nearly all developers reside in Russia. Open Source is a global effort, but current political situation makes collaboration hard and trust difficult to earn. Especially when development is not transparent and open. A lot of users and customers require software that is not potentially influenced or controlled by the Russian government.
    • MadMadBunny@lemmy.caEnglish
      2 hours

      Looks clean and consistent at first glance, which is a huge plus.

  • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
    1 hour

    This seems to be marketed to businesses and governments, but is it limited to them? Or should anyone be able to set up a public instance?