Euro-Office 1.0 Arrives To Open-Source Infighting: 'Compatibility Is Not Sovereignty' (zdnet.com) 81
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: If digital sovereignty is important to you, and it certainly is in the European Union (EU), then you'll be pleased to know that EuroOffice, a new open-source browser-based office suite alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, has officially reached its first stable release. A coalition of EU-based companies, including Nextcloud, Ionos, and other Euro-Stack participants, is positioning Euro-Office as a cornerstone of European digital sovereignty. However, The Document Foundation (TDF), LibreOffice's steward, accuses the project of reinforcing Microsoft's document lock-in, which TDF argues isn't friendly to open standards.
Setting aside the open-source politics for the moment, here's what Euro-Office brings you. The release went live on June 9. It is, however, not a stand-alone office suite. As the software's backers explain in a FAQ, "Euro-Office is more of an integration component. It merely handles document editing itself. Storage, as well as navigation, permissions, and sharing logic, have to be offered by a platform it is integrated in, like Proton Docs, Nextcloud Hub, or OpenProject." So, while you can install Euro-Office on your own Linux server, you'll need to integrate it yourself. If you're not a Linux expert, however, don't give up hope. Some companies have already released packaged, ready-to-install Euro-Office stacks, including Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring, Ionos' Nextcloud Workspace, and Office.eu. These initial deployments are web-based rather than standalone desktop suites.
The goal, organizers say, is to give European organizations a way to host their office suite on EU infrastructure under EU law, while maintaining an experience familiar to Microsoft Office users. Specifically, Euro-Office is meant to be "a solution for editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, developed as a true sovereign community collaboration of over a dozen different organizations." TDF's main objection is that Euro-Office's decision to default to Microsoft's OOXML format undercuts its claims of European digital sovereignty, since OOXML remains closely tied to Microsoft Office behavior and control. "Compatibility is not sovereignty," TDF warned, saying a European-branded suite that saves files in OOXML by default "is de facto an ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy."
Setting aside the open-source politics for the moment, here's what Euro-Office brings you. The release went live on June 9. It is, however, not a stand-alone office suite. As the software's backers explain in a FAQ, "Euro-Office is more of an integration component. It merely handles document editing itself. Storage, as well as navigation, permissions, and sharing logic, have to be offered by a platform it is integrated in, like Proton Docs, Nextcloud Hub, or OpenProject." So, while you can install Euro-Office on your own Linux server, you'll need to integrate it yourself. If you're not a Linux expert, however, don't give up hope. Some companies have already released packaged, ready-to-install Euro-Office stacks, including Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring, Ionos' Nextcloud Workspace, and Office.eu. These initial deployments are web-based rather than standalone desktop suites.
The goal, organizers say, is to give European organizations a way to host their office suite on EU infrastructure under EU law, while maintaining an experience familiar to Microsoft Office users. Specifically, Euro-Office is meant to be "a solution for editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, developed as a true sovereign community collaboration of over a dozen different organizations." TDF's main objection is that Euro-Office's decision to default to Microsoft's OOXML format undercuts its claims of European digital sovereignty, since OOXML remains closely tied to Microsoft Office behavior and control. "Compatibility is not sovereignty," TDF warned, saying a European-branded suite that saves files in OOXML by default "is de facto an ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy."
Compatibility catch 22 (Score:5, Insightful)
The catch 22 is this: If you don't maintain compatibility, you'll make it harder for customers using Microsoft formats to migrate. If you do maintain compatibility, then you reinforce MS formats as the de facto standards.
I'm sure they had this debate internally, and my guess is maintaining compatibility is the least-worst option.
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OOXML is an ISO standard. The fact that it's developed by MS doesn't really mean anything. In fact, if EuroOffice becomes popular it might restrict MS's freedom to kinda-not-quite support their own file format.
Re: Compatibility catch 22 (Score:5, Informative)
OOXML is a fake standard it's impossible to fully implement.
Re: Compatibility catch 22 (Score:1)
You've obviously never developed software before.
Browser developers lobbed similar complaints at HTML, which nobody ever fully supported, and all complained about the acid tests asking for features no websites ever used. Exactly why HTML no longer has static version numbers and instead is now a living standard constantly being updated.
And there are all kinds of standards like that. Take x.500 for example, which literally nothing fully supports.
Like any standard, it doesn't have to be fully supported, just "
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Like any standard, it doesn't have to be fully supported, just "good enough" will do.
Except it doesn't. It's shit all day. It makes people upset all day. This means it's costing productivity all day. See, in the real world with real humans, these user pain points have real impacts on those real people.
HTH, HAND!
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Except it doesn't. It's shit all day. It makes people upset all day.
That's because you have drinkypoo for brains, so you make decisions based on what you feel in your intestines and especially their contents, and not based on real-world data. And even if you have it, you ignore it. As in most things with a large population, Pareto applies: Roughly 80% of users only use 20% of features. Good enough would be starting with that 20%, and expanding based on user request/demand during UAT, to reach the other 10% needed by 95% of users, and after that, incrementally expanding base
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Re:Compatibility catch 22 (Score:5, Informative)
There is an ISO standard, yes. Overly complex for the simplest things, but whatever.
Then there's the actual de-facto reference implementation, which does not adhere strictly to that standard in the first place, meaning any other implementation that claims great compatibility with MS Office files will need to have "ISO standard" mode and "ISO standard but not really" mode.
Then there's the occasional extension to the standard, using not-yet (sometimes never) standardized additions, developed behind closed doors, whose behavior varies slightly from one version to another. Any other "compliant" implementation will also have to support them, but this time, oops, no documentation, good luck.
And, supposedly, Microsoft tools do support OpenDocument. But, given the limited amount of resource Microsoft have, they can't implement it very well, despite also being an ISO standard. Weirdly, it's always open/free/small business that have to put in the work and the money to support the ever changing non-compliant formats pushed by Microsoft. I wonder why.
The point is, no matter how popular alternative gets, there will always be a boss somewhere that goes "I can't open that document, fix that", and the only direction this ever move, is toward "we must support Microsoft shenanigans", never in the opposite direction. Then comes the EU, today, going "yep, let's do our best to adhere to Microsoft dominance and keep empowering them in it". I understand why some people are miffed by that.
I hear the "but I have to be able to read a document" argument, because it is true. But it is also true that playing catch-up with an openly hostile actor that have zero incentive to help anyone else in the race can only lead to losing said race.
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Yes. As I said: "if EuroOffice becomes popular it might restrict MS's freedom to kinda-not-quite support their own file format."
MSOffice is the, let's say reference implementation, because it's so popular. Choosing an incompatible file format isn't going to help make someone else popular. But if someone else gets popular enough that Microsoft cares about being compatible with them, then they'll have to adhere to the standard too.
See for example HTML/CSS.
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SUPPORTING a file format is not the same as making that format the default.
Euro-Office could support both OOXML and ODF (like LibreOffice does). What it uses by default is a separate setting. They could have set that to ODF while still supporting OOXML. No need for a bait and switch.
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Thing is even Microsoft Office doesn't have very good compatibility with Microsoft Office. Opening documents from older versions often just breaks them. I've had documents from hospitals that I couldn't get to render right in modern Microsoft Word, and spreadsheets from ancient projects that broke when imported into the Office 365 web version of Excel.
There is a reason why many orgs, especially legal outfits, want PDFs.
I've been sending people .odf files for a while now, and not had any issues. I don't use
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Thing is even Microsoft Office doesn't have very good compatibility with Microsoft Office.
And how! That's why many people keep one of the free suites on hand.
Opening documents from older versions often just breaks them. I've had documents from hospitals that I couldn't get to render right in modern Microsoft Word, and spreadsheets from ancient projects that broke when imported into the Office 365 web version of Excel.
There is a reason why many orgs, especially legal outfits, want PDFs.
I've been sending people .odf files for a while now, and not had any issues. I don't use a lot of advanced features, and MS Office seems to read them well enough for my needs.
I get all manner of older files from all manner of formats. Fortunately I am not tethered to Microsoft Office, so since I have to go into Libre Office to resurrect documents, I figure I'll just stay there. I'm certain someone will chime in with how they use some obscure "feature" only in Office 365, that LO is useless.
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OOXML is so open that it defines system constants that are not documented.
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It sounds like a desire to cut off their nose to spite their face: using an incompatible format would limit users -significantly.
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Your technical. The target audience, people who aren't, are going to have issues trying to share files with others and trying to explain why the file has a weird looking icon.
Yup, I had many people that get confused bring me files to open and convert them to the files they are familiar with.
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The catch 22 is this: If you don't maintain compatibility, you'll make it harder for customers using Microsoft formats to migrate. If you do maintain compatibility, then you reinforce MS formats as the de facto standards.
I'm sure they had this debate internally, and my guess is maintaining compatibility is the least-worst option.
So? There are charging standards for EVs just like there are standards for gas nozzles on ICE cars. People are still quite opinionated on what car that they want.
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Not a catch 22: LibreOffice has good compatibility (import and export) for MS formats and they improve it all the time, this is not about mere compatibility but about monopoly on file formats. And when all office suites work by default with MS formats, they maintain the monopoly.
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So? They don't charge to license it, and it doesn't actually lock anyone into their ecosystem, so who the f- cares? Besides you and the eight other people with a file format bug up their ass that is.
So what is your solution when a department head brings you a lot of files in some old format and tells you they need updated in order toe be archived
Just tell them no, and tell them they have a bug up their ass?
Perhaps your use case has no such requirements. Doesn't mean other use cases are irrelevant. Doesn't mean they are only a few people. And since Microsoft doesn't offer a thing doesn't mean the use case doesn't exist.
I've even had to recover files from floppy disks. I'll offer no guarantees, b
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We clearly aren't talking about the same thing.
I have what you call a file format bug up my ass. Why would my comment be irrelevant?
Some people have no involvement in archival of pertinent documents. They would perhaps think that someone who needs to retrieve documents is some sort of one off thing. We are not. Our ability to retrieve old documents is sometimes very very critical.
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Not a catch 22: LibreOffice has good compatibility (import and export) for MS formats and they improve it all the time, this is not about mere compatibility but about monopoly on file formats. And when all office suites work by default with MS formats, they maintain the monopoly.
I have access to O365, but yeah, LibreOffice is simply better.
Whatever claims some might have to an obscure Excel function, the fact remains that O365, is sorely lacking in the ability to open just about everything, which at least for my use case, is a show stopper.
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Compatibility can be a user option. But usually the fascistic tendencies of these type of project owners prevent that.
I smell a contradiction (Score:5, Interesting)
"Browser-based" and "European digital sovereignty."
The cloud is a trap that takes away sovereignty.
The only way to ensure sovereignty and control is with software running locally with NO cloud dependency.
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"The only way to ensure sovereignty and control is with software running locally with NO cloud dependency."
They're not talking about personal sovereignty. Cloud infrastructure an organization owns is "running locally" to that organization.
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Or more like "cloud infrastructure running within physical and legal jurisdiction of the EU is running locally to the EU" if you prefer .. if it's software they've written, running on hardware within the EU's physical and legal reach, voila, "sovereignty".
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Governments will define "sovereignty" geographically first then amend what will fall within that "domain" of responsibility. That is always a lot to all potential users. And nothing scales to fit like a cloud environment.
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Browsers are not the cloud.
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Who said “the cloud” has to exist outside the building of your organization?
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European government sovereignty not European citizen sovereignty. The goal is only to shift which master is in control, not to free the serfs.
Re: I smell a contradiction (Score:3)
Since "sovereign citizens" are mainly tools with feet, i think i can live quite happily without them. For the thinking people there is always the chance to self-host.
By the way: without a sovereign government democracy has no meaning whatsoever, and we already saw how Trump treats his "friends". Talking about serfs is tough talk from a keyboard warrior. The rest of us just want to make sure that what limited control we do have over our government isn't removed in favor of one of Putins or Trumps cronies.
We'
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Firstly, the browser isn't the cloud. Euro-Office doesn't depend on the cloud and has desktop versions which do run locally.
Secondly, there's nothing about cloud that breaches European digital sovereignty. In fact the whole point is that it has partnered with European cloud providers not subject to non-EU influence. There are many such cloud providers to choose from.
Thirdly, there's nothing about the cloud that breaches *YOUR* sovereignty. Download the docker container, slap it on a Linux box and host it fr
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I think you can self host it. It's something that many orgs want, hence the popularity of Office 365 or whatever Microsoft calls it these days. Makes centralized management and backup easy.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Start in Minutes, Move at Your Pace
Step 1
Link your Microsoft or Google account.
LOL
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But what you linked is not what this article is discussion.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Informative)
https://office.eu/ [office.eu]
Not the same thing.
https://github.com/Euro-Office [github.com] is what this is about.
They are somewhat related, though:
"Euro-Office is open source and developed in public by a community of individuals and organizations. We welcome contributions from anyone, including individuals, companies, public organizations and non-profits. We encourage anyone who cares about free and open source, modern office technology to get involved! Our goal is to have as few barriers as possible to contribution.
Current contributors and supporters include:
Abilian
BTactic
EuroStack
IONOS
Nextcloud
Office.EU
Open-Xchange
OpenProject
Proton
Soverin
Tuta
XWiki"
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Euro Office != Office.EU. The latter is one implementation of the open source software, which you can run locally without any cloud what so ever, or run locally with your own self-hosted cloud too.
Re: Nope (Score:2)
That's not Euro Office.
Microsoft Office Open (OOXML) format (Score:5, Insightful)
The format m$ office uses is Microsoft Office XML (MOX), which is proprietary and is changed every time libreoffice goes and reverse engineers the latest sabotage (for example, libreoffice supports parsing XML-encoded C struct, which is needed to support the typical m$ development practice of dumping the memory of the data structure that encodes the data into the file).
"OOXML" is the result of m$ grabbing their internal documentation (that they don't follow anyway), removing the important information and then dumping the remaining over 6000 pages and calling it a "standard" and then got ECMA to rubber stamp it as a "standard" (even though something impossible to implement even after following 6000 pages is not a standard and will never be).
M$ definitely didn't corrupt the voting process by instructing their serfs to vote yes in exchange for "marketing contribution" and "extra support in the form av Microsoft resources"; reference [archive.org]
Its a start (Score:3)
This atlases keeps documents out of US hands because of the cloud act.
It can only ge stronger as time goes by
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I Wish Them Luck (Score:2)
I wish them luck in their endeavors. But, this is some alpha shit. There are already better European alternatives.(See Proton Docs.)
Re: I Wish Them Luck (Score:2)
Proton isn't European, it's Swiss. And this of no use to ensure sovereignty as the Swiss usually just sell to the highest bidder.
Re: I Wish Them Luck (Score:2)
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No...no....no.... (Score:3)
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The functionally is already fine on LibreOffice, just make it look cool !!!
It isn't. For example, the spreadsheet lacks live pivot tables.
I use LibreOffice more or less exclusively now, since Calc became able to handle large documents without exploding. But it's not perfect.
Re: No...no....no.... (Score:1)
Why not ask LIbreOffice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Why not ask LIbreOffice (Score:2)
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It seems to me that the EU could have asked LibreOffice to add features that they might have wanted.
Libre Office is not at all the same thing. The closest thing you can get based on Libre Office is Collabora Online, and even that isn't the same thing. You're basically comparing an offroad SUV for camping to a bicycle. They both have wheels, and that's about where the similarity ends.
But in any case this is a fork of OnlyOffice since the latter is developed by Russian nationals (even if they don't currently live in Russia). They didn't develop anything new, they simply forked something that already existed
Cheesy name (Score:3)
I am glad people start to wake up in the EU but they could choose other names than euro-this or euro-that. That sounds a little bit like a flag weaving redneck.
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Re: Cheesy name (Score:2)
Well it's kinda hard to come up with a different name since the whole point of this exercise is to provide a European controlled initiative.
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It is not. It is even the whole point of the exercise and a necessity for Europe (Not just the EU). But it is not forbidden to show a little bit of style. :)
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That sounds a little bit like a flag weaving redneck.
HAHAHAH I know it's just a typo, but that paints a fun picture!
The Documentation Format Dilemma (Score:2)
You have to interact with business and other non-government entities. Requiring they use ODT is a complete non starter, so using OOXML by default is the practical choice.
And yes, that means how Microsoft uses OOXML. The ISO standard is a starting point, but really, you have to also refer to the https://github.com/dotnet/Open-XML-SDK [github.com] as well. Yes, this is a .Net library, but it works on .Net Core just fine.
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True up to a point, and governments are past that point. They can in fact tell companies what formats the government will accept and generate and companies can't afford to just ignore that. And that's actually the first step towards sovereignty: dictate formats that aren't controlled by hostile entities. So, start by declaring the ODF formats the official government standard formats. You'll accept documents in other formats, but you can't guarantee they'll be correctly rendered on your end and you won't put
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Fork and drain a Russian project: European (Score:1)
for now I think it is the best choice (Score:4, Interesting)
Although I personally ditched MS Office > 25 years and switched to Open Office and later Libre Office, I actually think they made the right decision, and I also see a lot of misunderstandings here.
Euro Office and OnlyOffice
To understand Euro Office it is important to understand that this is a fork of the AGPL licensed OnlyOffice. OnlyOffice is an Office suite that runs as a desktop application on Windows, Mac and Linux. But its main usage is in that it also run on a server giving you a full featured office suite that runs in the browser.
I have used the desktop version when I get documents in MS format that aren't handled properly by Libre. Notably embedded media of presentations didn't work for me in Libre when they worked well in OnlyOffice.
Unfortunately there are some questions on the background of the company behind it. There apparently are still strong ties with Russia. So companies have serious reservations on using OnlyOffice.
Nextcloud and Only/Euro Office and Collabora/LibreOffice
If you haven't looked up what Nextcloud is do so. It is not a cloud offering. It is Open Source software that allows anyone to self-host a 'cloud' offering you functionality like MS 365. You can self host, both as an individual as well as any organisation. There are also multiple third parties that host for you if you prefer.
For the functionality to allow you to create and edit documents in Nextcloud in the browser, it needs an 'engine'. You could use Collabora (based on LibreOffice) or OnlyOffice. This is actually the killer feature. Working simultaneous in a document is an important feature.
Collabora works pretty well for your home setup. I use it in my own Nextcloud deployment. However compared to OnlyOffice it is pretty clunky. If you get a setup with many users, OnlyOffice works a lot better. This has largely to do with the architecture and is not easy to solve.
Nextcloud the company
I have followed to some degree Nextcloud the company for a number of years. I am convinced that they are a genuine Open Source company. I realise there are never guarantees, but so far they walk the walk and talk the talk. They have a clear business model. They do not want to make money from your home setup. They like (don't demand) to see setups with large user bases to get their enterprise offerings which means support. The free/open versions are not crippled in any way. As far as I can the tell, the only technical difference is that you get extended support on older versions and can opt to be more conservative as new features end up in new releases a bit later.
They also don't offer a Cloud service themselves, they leave that to third parties.
Euro Office and sovereignty
Mainly due to the reservations organisations have with origin of OnlyOffice, but also apparently that cooperation with the company OnlyOffice was troublesome there is actually a great demand for a trusted fork of OnlyOffice. This is why Nextcloud, together with partners, did just that. They forked it.
I like LibreOffice very much, have donated to them and will continue to use it. That includes Collabora on my Nextcloud server.
But I have to agree that for a serious alternative to MS, OnlyOffice, and now Euro Office is much better suited.
IMHO LibreOffice shot itself in the foot for ignoring the demand for online office. Collabora bravely carried the torch, but strictly from the users perspective, the browser based version is not all that. And apparently, due to the architecture of Libre, this not something that is easily fixed.
OOXML vs ODF
So it makes sense for Nextcloud to prefer EuroOffice as the office engine. They deal with customers. The ODF support however is currently sub-par. So they kind of have no choice to for now make that the default. They have said that one of the things they are committed to is to improve ODF support. It is just too early for that.
Sovereignty
If you are not from Europe you may not realise how serious the move to be l
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As I'm not a native English speaker I'll take that as a compliment ;-)
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One must be careful nowadays.
I mean, hell, you could even be an AI bot whose native language is binary.
I don't think you are, I'm just saying that it would be entirely honest and accurate for an AI to say their native language is not Engli
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I absolutely share your animosity towards AI slop. Kind of sad though if as a result it is suspect if someone takes the time to both carefully formulate an answer and formats it in the hopes of bringing across the point. If it helps, check my UID, it should be clear I am not exactly Gen Z ;-). Although people my age also use AI.
But fair enough, these days, I too suspect AI if something looks to neat, so I get your point.
It needs to support OOXML, but as the default? (Score:2)
For the open source world it'd be better if it could open and import OOXML formats, but the default formats for new documents should be ODT.
However, I imagine they'd get complaints when they start sending around ODT files that a lot of people can't open.