Looks like it’s powered by NextCloud? If so, that’s FOSS funding that we all win!
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.
Euro-Office seems to have been directly forked from ONLYOFFICE. With that said, the Nextcloud team are some of the core contributors.
Tried LibreOffice, hated it for being clunky and unpleasant.
Hoping the Euro is better.
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 Build instructions are unreliable, outdated or just plain broken.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.
if only there was a good, actively developed and highly regarded free and open source alternative whose name would be something like “LibreOffice”…
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.
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.
OnlyOffice is both. They have a fantastic web version that integrates well into NextCloud already. And they have a mobile version too. Assuming all of those get forked with it, we can certainly expect a Gsuite alternative.
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.
I remember seeing a post earlier this year about libreoffice doing a web based version.
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.
LibreOffice still hasn’t managed to sort out making the UI scalable on Wayland, so you’re stuck with either needing a magnifying glass to see the icons or you have to stand in the next room over and nothing in between. Given how many years they’ve had to work on that, I feel like the odds of them developing a working web UI in my lifetime are pretty slim.
Yeah, people are going to only office because libre office hasn’t sorted out a lot of issues.
right, thank you for pointing it out.
An office suite for collaborating ? Great idea ! I brt they would call it something like “Collabora Office” !
It takes more than a name to deliver the result. MS Office365 also claims to be great for collaboration, and its a trainwreck to try to use it in that way.
Have you tried https://cryptpad.fr/ ?
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.
It can import most file types supported by only office
Where is that option? I’m only getting the option to create a new document for some reason, and to export documents created on cryptpad to docx. I assumed it was because they only figured out the conversion one way but maybe I’m just missing the button?
OpenOffice?
OpenOffice has been more or less dead for a decade. LibreOffice was its successor.
Looks like this is going to be a browser based suite with online collaboration, more like Google docs than Microsoft office.
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.
Office suites like this are usually more aimed at corporate customers anyway.
Uhh, you realize it’s just OnlyOffice, right? Another actively developed, free and open source (but web-first, vs desktop first) software?
While they claim to be open source, OnlyOffice uses their trademark to block forks and derivative work. Which is why this Euro Office was created, along with more control over mobile apps, since that part has issues as well.
Yes, which makes this choice even better since these will be open maintainers under a new name. Looking forward to it.
Why are there so many different open source office suites? Wouldn’t it be more effective if they joined forces? Or do they have incompatible visions?
Because before cloud vendor subscription lock-in was considered socially acceptable, there were a lot of big tech companies that wanted to be seen being “open source” in name to court customers while locking you in by other means. “Open”Office is the quintessential example, but it is by no means a unique situation in the “Open” source world.
It happens often enough that there are some people who get very upset with you for not knowing the difference between “Open Source”, “open source”, and “source available”.
The later, most likely. LibreOffice is a desktop native app, while OnlyOffice is a web-first app.
Libraoffice isn’t good though, if it was people would already use it.
We do…
Who does? I don’t know of any major company that uses LibreOffice
Moving the goalpost much?
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.
OnlyOffice has a decent product owned by a pretty shitty business, so I am glad to see another alternative based on their product.
Isn’t Only Office European too? My memory tells me it’s from Estonia. It’s Europe!
No it’s not. The main company is Russian and they try way too hard to hide the fact that they are from Russia. They constantly creating new sub companies in Estonia, Cypher, UK and some more and transfer the HQ there while main Company is still in Russia along with CEO that owns it.
Oh, that’s sad. Thanks for informing me (and others) on that part! Considering the war in Ukraine (where I live now), there’s a no way, I’m going to use it then. In this case, I agree. Having a European solution is better than using Russian or even USian.
it seems to be latvia according to wikipedia
With quite some controversy of ties to Russia
Yeah, fuck them. That shit does not make it onto my system.
And a bit dumb
https://www.webpronews.com/fsf-slaps-down-onlyoffices-agpl-gambit-fork-freedom-hangs-in-the-balance/
They tried to abuse their trademark to control forks
this seems stupid. maybe this fork could be worth using
LibreOffice feels like a java app with 40 years of baggage and tech debt going back to Sun Microsystems
It feels like when I was trying to use GIMP. In theory there might be a good product in there somewhere, but it’s not worth it to wade through the terrible UX decisions in order to find out.
Afaik there’s a port that makes the ui more like Photoshop, I forget the name, maybe another lemming can fill it in.
There were several attempts for that. The most recent one is PhotoGIMP, which is actually a patch and not a port. Before that, there used to be Gimpshop, but the dude behind it got fucked over by someone who bought a dotcom domain with that name and served ad and spyware. Though, ever since the major gui rework several years ago, i don’t see much of a point. It is a different software, no matter how much you try to cover it up, the functionality and workflow will always be different. And most other commercial software don’t constantly try to copy some other software either.
It can look like however it wants, I just wish that it looked decent rather than looking like something that a rather untalented junior dev would come up with.
LibreOffice isn’t an alternative to web-based office suites.
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.
I can’t wait for all the Office EU <–> MS365 tools Microsoft make that always make the Office EU software look bad on purpose
The problem I have with this is, that it won’t be compatible with Marcors and other stuff - Libre Office does work perfectly well for “normal” Office stuff and even basic excel…but anything beyond that is actually needed more than another “basic” Office software.
In LibreOffice you can code marcos using Python. The actual problem is cross compatibility ( while its possible to execute VBA in LibreOffcie
I know. The point though is, there are projects that have countless hours of work in them and sometimes even work together with access - not only would you need to invest time to redo those, you’d also have to learn python… Which is most often the argument for a switch to Libre falls on its face. I don’t like it, and I don’t agree with that, but it is what I am confronted with nearly every day over countless different companies…
Agree, grip of the lock-in is sitting tight … But as you mentioned, its less the lack of software than it is path dependencies.
I think I’m gonna stick with LibreOffice
Nothing bad in having some variety.
Maybe they’ll come up with stuff the other team didn’t and both improve that way.
I’ll gladly try any alternatives to a suite that feels 20 years out of date personally.
Now when are we getting: As-Office, Aus-Office, Afri-Office, NAmeri-Office, SAmeri-Office and Ant-Office?
Ant-Office would be so cool…
🥶
What is this, an office for ants???
Congratulations!
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.
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 😍 🇪🇺
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”
It could be worse:
Apache Foundation’s OnlyFansMy margins can only get so tight.
why reinvent the wheel when we have LibreOffice already
OnlyOffice is a much more polished and mature suite than LibreOffice.
Is it really, or is it just a matter of interface?
It is actually better in rendering Microsoft office files with weird layouts
Also it integrates wonderfully in nextcloud, it’s like Google docs (auto save, history, collaborative editing)
I see. Their focus does seem to be on microsoft compatibility, although pushing odf would be more sensible in Europe.
Hope they will provide a Mac and Linux build.
It’s online only for now - clients are coming but for now focus is on online.
Yes, the desktop apps are a separate build, but if they stop at online editing ie for nextcloud, it’s a big misunderstanding of what office work stil look like today
Yeah I tend to agree but then I’m surprised how many people think GSuite is just fine!
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.
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.
