If governments across the world gave a quarter of what they give to Microsoft to open source projects that compete, not only would they get to stop paying Microsoft all that money, they'd have a better product to boot. Add to that the side benefit to people and companies using it, and it's pretty obvious why Microsoft will do everything in its power (except make a better product for a better price) to prevent that.
this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
745 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
86683 readers
3589 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I can't wait for all the Office EU <--> MS365 tools Microsoft make that always make the Office EU software look bad on purpose
i remember hearing this is just a rebrand of onlyoffice, is there something interesting about it (from a technical pov)?
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 Build instructions are unreliable, outdated or just plain broken.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.
Ah, good riddance to OnlyOffice, then!
Looks clean and consistent at first glance, which is a huge plus.
Despite the name, OnlyOffice has no connection with LibreOffice's ancestor, the Apache Foundation's OnlyOffice
It pisses me off when tech journalists don't bother to double check with a simple web search. Don't even need to actually search, just type in the search bar "apache foundation o" and it autocompletes in "apache foundation OpenOffice"
load more comments
(6 replies)
I’m using nextcloud+onlyoffice as office 365 replacement so this is simply excellent news! Glad i can get rid of onlyoffice the company.
What's wrong with Only office? I like it way more than Collabora.
They’re trying to exploit what they consider a loophole in the AGPL to stop people from forking the project.
At the same time they refuse to accept any PRs.
FSF has a great write up about it.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/agpl-is-not-a-tool-for-taking-freedom-away
It's also supposedly a Russian project, which may or may not be relevant to people.
Spotted a typo, it refers to "Apache Foundation's OnlyOffice," when that product is OpenOffice (as one can discover by following the link). This is different from the OnlyOffice mentioned earlier in the paragraph.
Isn't OpenOffice deprecated? Or am I mistaken?
It still exists and gets regular updates, but has been half-dead for 20 years.
I wish OnlyOffice was a little more well-known and community-developed - it's way better at what it does
OnlyOffice recently got famous for not understanding FOSS.
load more comments
(2 replies)
LibreOffice is the fork that’s truly community driven. OpenOffice is open source but controlled by big tech.
Explains why LibreOffice is the default choice then. Thanks
https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/140634/dutch-central-bank-chooses-lidl-for-european-cloud/
https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/141644/kpn-launches-sovereign-cloud-with-stackit-in-the-netherlands/
One of the biggest telecom provider of the Netherlands KPN has started to work with German company Schwarzdigits to create a fully European Cloud as well and they'll release it today!! Looooooooooooooooooooooooove these initiatives !!!! Letsgo Europe 😍 🇪🇺
"Office EU is a complete cloud-based office suite (like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) that is 100% European-owned and runs entirely on European infrastructure."
its datafarming
Can you elaborate?
“Cloud-based” is the issue they’re complaining about. I mean we’re talking about an office suite. Those have been able to run on a potato since the 1980’s. Why the heck does that need to be hosted by a supercomputer that somebody else owns and operates?
Collaborative editing and the like isn't really easy to solve with other methods. Maybe a P2P approach could be viable.
P2P wouldn't scale very well, though. It would be really complicated once you have more than a small handful of people.
From what I remember, Lemmy had/has a similar problem, where the whole thing would start bogging down past a point, because all the connected instances would need to update each other, instead of a main hub they could query like more centralised networks would.
It can be self hosted, so the cloud can be a computer that you own.
Most businesses will be able to set this up on their own as well. This isn't really aimed at the public it's more a business to business viewpoint.
Having degoogled this year, I deeply miss Google sheets and the ability to (a) summon it on any device and (b) share it with shy real-time participants.
I am trying out cryptpad which feels both flabby in terms of complexity and ui, but also in terms of delays and nuisances in processing and learning curve. Like if I were dumped into 'Corel quattro' or 'Lotus 123' for the first time, now.
But I don't want them being able to slurp up my data and then hand it over to an adversarial government, so I am very interested in continuing to shift to European service providers for email, password management, and office documents.
The criticism in the thread isn't about the vendor in specific, but the technology in general? Because I need persuasion (not that it's your job, I just know we are all fumbling towards hopefully "better")
Well hold on now. Could it be self hosted?
I use google docs when i want a simple document that is accessible and thats useful. I use open office or local programs when i want to drill into the details.
It's for self-hosting.
Looks like it's powered by NextCloud? If so, that's FOSS funding that we all win!
Euro-Office seems to have been directly forked from ONLYOFFICE. With that said, the Nextcloud team are some of the core contributors.
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.
I'm disappointed it's not "Euroffice".
That only works in English. It's easier not to try and get clever with naming schemes when it needs to cover 12 different languages including one language that's written right to left.
Also from an administration standpoint it's a pain in the arse having a program with a clever name that you have to explain every time somebody tries to search for it in the company portal, and then can't find it. I already have this issue with some software on our domain called Omny instead of Omni.
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?
People inside the US are sick of this too.
Now when are we getting: As-Office, Aus-Office, Afri-Office, NAmeri-Office, SAmeri-Office and Ant-Office?
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?
Euro-Office's 1.0 release, available June 9 for anyone to download from the project's public GitHub repositories
It is a fork of only office, and as for now the aim is to keep it open to all.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›