Euro-Office Wants To Replace Google Docs and Microsoft Office (howtogeek.com)
- Reference: 0181189662
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/31/0438235/euro-office-wants-to-replace-google-docs-and-microsoft-office
- Source link: https://www.howtogeek.com/this-new-open-source-web-editor-wants-to-replace-google-docs-and-microsoft-office/
> Euro-Office is a new open-source project supported by Nextcloud, EuroStack, Wiki, Proton, Soverin, Abilian, and other companies based in Europe. The goal is to build an online office suite that can open and edit standard Microsoft Office documents (DOCX, PPTX, XLSX) and the OpenDocument format (ODS, ODT, ODP) used by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. The current design is remarkably close to Microsoft Office and its tabbed toolbars, so there shouldn't be much of a learning curve for anyone used to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
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> Importantly, Euro-Office is only the document editing component. It's designed to be added to cloud storage services, online wikis, project management tools, and other software. For example, you could have some Word documents in your Nextcloud file storage, and clicking them in a browser could open the Euro-Office editor. That way, Nextcloud (or Proton, or anyone else) doesn't have to build its own document editor from scratch.
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> Euro-Office is based on OnlyOffice, which is open-source under the AGPL license. The project explained that "Contributing is impossible or greatly discouraged" with OnlyOffice's developers, with outside code changes rarely accepted, so a hard fork was required. The company behind OnlyOffice is also based in Russia, and Russia is still heavily sanctioned by most European nations due to the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The project's home page explains, "A lot of users and customers require software that is not potentially influenced or controlled by the Russian government."
As for why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice, the project simply said: "We believe open source is about collaboration, and we look for opportunities to integrate and collaborate with the LibreOffice community and companies like Collabora."
UPDATE: Slashdot reader [3]Elektroschock shares [4]a statement from OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov, expressing his concerns about the Euro-Office inclusion of its software with trademarks removed: "We liked the AGPL v3 license because its 7th clause allows us to ensure that our code retains its original attributes, so that users are able to clearly identify the developers and the brand behind the program..."
Bannov continued: "The core issue here isn't just about what the AGPL license states, but about the additional provisions we, as the authors, have included. This is a critical distinction, even if some may argue otherwise. We firmly assert that the Euro-Office project is currently infringing on our copyright in a deliberate and unacceptable manner."
"As the creators of ONLYOFFICE, we want to make our position unequivocally clear: we do not grant anyone the right to remove our branding or alter our open-source code without proper attribution. This principle is non-negotiable and will never change. We demand that the Euro-Office project either restore our branding and attributions or roll back all forks of our project, refraining from using our code without proper acknowledgment of ONLYOFFICE."
[1] https://github.com/Euro-Office/
[2] https://www.howtogeek.com/this-new-open-source-web-editor-wants-to-replace-google-docs-and-microsoft-office/
[3] https://slashdot.org/~Elektroschock
[4] https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/interview-with-lev-bannov-ceo-at-onlyoffice-on-the-euro-office-situation
What's amazing is the current craziness (Score:2, Offtopic)
Is so good for the billionaires that they don't care that America is rapidly getting shut out of the rest of the world because we are a national security risk...
Ordinarily what would be happening right now is billionaires would be telling Trump to knock it the fuck off with the crazy foreign policy because of the risk of us companies being frozen out of European markets. But nope. Everybody is just full steam ahead on the Trump train.
It's another example of how every single system designed to protec
Re: (Score:1)
Do you have any particular feelings about Euro-Office or potential license violations? So far you haven't engaged with the summary at all. Otherwise this move would/should be happening anyway. MS and Google can both be a huge pita no matter who is President, and freeing yourself from their grip should be seen as a desirable move no matter where you live.
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The billionaires are probably telling him but he's a dementia-ridden lunatic so it's not helping.
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So I was using telling Trump kind of broadly. What they would actually be doing is calling the senators they own and telling them to sit down with Trump and explain that if he doesn't back the fuck down he's going to lose his War Powers. And if he keeps up at it they will have the senators they own impeach him and remove him from office after the midterms.
Remember the Trump isn't actually in charge the billionaires are. So if this is happening it's because the billionaires want it to.
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Actually, I'm pretty happy w/ the door slammed in the faces of Nadella and Pichai
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B'cos it is an open source project? Or is the question about why are they AGPL as opposed to GPL?
Looking forward to open source cooling solutions.. (Score:3)
... from OnlyOfficeFans!
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No, no its a new platform for OnlyFansOffice suite of productivity uhh... enhancers?
OnlyOffice CEO doesn't understand AGPL (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly OnlyOffice tried to run around AGPL terms by forcing any derivative work to use their logo while simultaneously refusing to allow its use (trademark). They tried to do this by using clause 7(b):
you may (...) supplement the terms of this License with terms: (...)
b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it
Unfortunately for them logo is not legal notice nor atribution, so they basically created a "further restriction" under the terms of AGPL, which is allowed to be dropped
If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.
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Is that what they are doing? I was under the impression that their claim is that the AGPL does not grant anyone the right to remove their branding or alter their open-source code without proper attribution. So why not preserve their branding and logos?
Whether OpenOffice actually lives in Riga or Nizhny Novgorod is not something for the EuroOffice staff to determine. They should simply work w/ OpenOffice, and then if the EU has a problem w/ that, they should determine in which country OpenOffice actuall
I get that they don't like MS office (Score:2)
because it's U.S. based and our government most definitely has various backdoors to get at anything that's generated using the package. I don't care much, but I totally understand that a lot of people don't like it. I consider myself to be a loyal US citizen, but sorry Uncle Sam, nothing you tell me will convince me that you're not snooping. I know too much history to be that naive.
And, if I was a European, I probably wouldn't like the idea of using MS office and every document I make winding up on a US
Re: (Score:1)
> But, dudes, you're trying to tell me the a RUSSIAN program is gonna be better? What planet do you live on?
Open source Russian vs closed source American? That matters on this planet.
Re: I get that they don't like MS office (Score:5, Informative)
I like Microsoft office, better than Libreoffice, which I used a few years before I got Ms office at home through work. But since Snowden, it was pretty clear to me that there probably were intentional back doors.
Best case, this was only used for (inter)national security. Worst case? This was abused to do industrial espionage, extort people, ... With Trump? You bet they will abuse it without a second thought. We are switching back to Libreoffice now. Too bad though. I miss PowerPoint and OneDrive. Oh well... we will adapt. It is for the greater good.
Re:I get that they don't like MS office (Score:4, Informative)
> a RUSSIAN program is gonna be better? What planet do you live on?
You do understand this is a fork of an open-source package, that the entire code of the original version can be read, and any backdoor, if found, removed from the fork, right?
Re: I get that they don't like MS office (Score:2)
"You do understand ... " - No, he's not.
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I think you've never tried to understand the code of a large project written by a different group of people.
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The entire code is there to view. If worried about a backdoor, feel free to do a clone and go examine it.
I am all for office suite, be it OpenOffice, Libreoffice. I prefer if at least 1-2 would get backing/funding/devs to work on it, preferably more than one, but a F/OSS office suite will be a major gain. Especially if it supported storing documents via various cloud providers, as well as document versioning. Microsoft Word used to allow one to have one document with a ton of versions in it, which made
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It's riddled with ways to make it difficult for others to contribute. There's comments in Russian (ok, originally Russian project, so to be expected), obfuscated code (not nice), and binary blobs in there.
OnlyOffice doesn't want people forking their project or even contributing to it. That being said, OnlyOffice is a commercial company, maintaining the project under the same name. They are allowed to do whatever they want to it.
That being said, when a fork happens, it's tough for them. Soon they'll face com
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As others have pointed out above, it is an open source project licensed under the AGPL. So backdoors should be easy to detect
Aside from that, there is a question about whether it's a Russian or a Latvian company. It's headquarters are located in Riga, but there have been claims that the entire staff lives and works in Nizhny Novgorod. So that is something that could be of interest to the EU, but not the EuroOffice creators. The latter's role should only be to come up w/ a software alternative for the
OnlyOffice can't save as ODF (Score:2)
OnlyOffice can't save in OpenDocument formats (ODT, et al), which makes it a total non-starter. Would make much more sense to spend their energy on improving Collabora's mobile and web UI.
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You are incorrect, at least for the "desktop" Linux version. It saves in ODF formats for the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation modes - just checked.
Hostile (Score:1)
Haha what a bunch of leaches. Of course they don't care about legality, Russians won't be able to do much anyway.
uhh (Score:5, Insightful)
"As for why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice, the project simply said: "We believe open source is about collaboration, and we look for opportunities to integrate and collaborate with the LibreOffice community and companies like Collabora.""
Ok, since they just refuse to answer the question, does anyone else know why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice?
Guessing (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a guess but it seems like the Euro-Office team is keen on violating a license or two, and perhaps they found it easier/simpler to violate the OnlyOffice license.
Re:Guessing (Score:5, Informative)
IANAL but It is the assumption of OnlyOffice that there is a violation. EuroOffice in commit message on [1]Github [github.com]
> Remove unenforceable and non-obligatory Section 7 additions from core
> Under AGPLv3 Section 7, downstream recipients may remove terms that constitute "further restrictions" beyond what Section 7(a)-(f) permits, as affirmed by the FSF.
> Logo retention requirement (Section 7(b)): Section 7(b) permits requiring preservation of "legal notices or author attributions". A product logo is a trademark/brand element, not a legal notice or author attribution. It therefore exceeds the scope of 7(b), qualifies as a "further restriction" under Section 10, and may be removed.
> Trademark disclaimer (Section 7(e)): Purely declaratory — the AGPLv3 does not grant trademark rights in any case. The disclaimer creates no affirmative obligation on the licensee and removing it changes no rights or obligations. There is no legal basis requiring its preservation.
Apparently AGPLv3 allows some additions in Section 7. What is allowed is defined in a-f. OnlyOffice feels that 7-b allows them to demand that the attribution means that they can demand the Logo and brand elements need to stay. Euro-Office apparently disagrees.
Euro-Office also claims that 7e gives no legal basis for it.
I can't assess who is right.
As to why OnlyOffice over Collabora. In my experience, as OnlyOffice uses the OOXML format of MS, there are a few less issues with MS Office files. In my experience there are indeed a few less lay-out issues. Another thing I once notices was embedded media files in a Powerpoint file that did work in OnlyOffice and not in Libre.
Although OnlyOffice is now officially based in the EU, there remains some doubts on them as they originated in Russia.
[1] https://github.com/Euro-Office/core/pull/29
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> I can't assess who is right.
I would wish that EuroOffice follows the request of the OpenOffice CEO and submits the disagreement in interpretation of the license to the FSF for their decision.
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It would also probably be less costly than starting a legal fight over license violations.
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You raise some legitimate points about file format compatibility.
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I hoped they asked FSF- Europe as the legal system in the EU is quite different than in the USA.
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This is a weird situation.
If the license is changed it's no longer AGPL, it's a unique license.
If the license has restrictions then the copyright is violated by not adhering to the license.
The above makes it sound like both parties want to have it both ways.
I would just give the Russians proper attribution but the European governments hate Russia so much that they couldn't possibly do that. This is a problem with having governments run open source projects.
In the en it's probably going to be like Russian ga
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If they are lifting a GPL/AGPL licensed piece of software, are they allowed to change the license? I thought they weren't!
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Although Lev Bannov is a Russian citizen, OpenOffice is based in Riga. The question is - are the EU's sanctions on Russia an unlimited hatred of any Russkiy and Rossiyane people, or are they solely aimed at President Putin's regime? Right now, it looks like it's more of the former than the latter
Anyway, EuroOffice should either acknowledge the OpenOffice creators if they're basing their product on that (even BSD license requires one to preserve the credits of the original creators) or they should instea
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Since Russia is already under sanctions, the EuroOffice probably thought that violating the license of a Russian company is equivalent to applying sanctions on Moscow
More seriously, it's probably b'cos OnlyOffice is feature-compatible w/ Microsoft Office, particularly Excel. Something that I doubt that either LibreOffice or Collabora do
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> "As for why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice, the project simply said: "We believe open source is about collaboration, and we look for opportunities to integrate and collaborate with the LibreOffice community and companies like Collabora.""
> Ok, since they just refuse to answer the question, does anyone else know why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice?
Probably the same reason I use OnlyOffice over LibreOffice? OnlyOffice has a clean, intuitive interface and high compatibility with Office "Open" XML (docx, pptx, xlsx). LibreOffice is clunky, non-intuitive and just frustrating to use. Compatibility has improved, but still has issues compared to OnlyOffice.
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The interface in OnlyOffice more closely resembles the modern ribbon interface in MS Office. For some people, that's a reason to choose LibreOffice instead. OnlyOffice. LibreOffice works very well for me, but I don't work with complex documents, and I don't need collaboration or cloud stuff. The latter might be why they selected OnlyOffice, since that's more like Office365 than MS Office; a more modern paradigm.
OnlyOffice spreadsheets (Score:2)
Is OnlyOffice's Excel equivalent something that has all the capabilities of MS Excel - pivot tables, formulas and so on?
Re: uhh (Score:3)
There is already modern euro-centric rework of LibreOffice, it is Collabora. It used to be just a rebranded fork of LibreOffice, but it then evolved in an online suite, which integrates with Nextcloud. And most recently, a completely new interface, based on LibreOffice but (if I understand correctly) written in python and with all the java legacy code stripped off. The first public version was only released a couple of months ago, it is still a bit unstable and missing some features, but completely usable.
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> written in python and with all the java legacy code stripped off.
LOL. That's like saying "I removed all that old FORTRAN code and replaced it with BASIC"
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I have been an on-and-off user of OpenOffice/LibreOffice for many years, and I have to say I've always found it extremely clunky. By all accounts the OOO codebase is pretty convoluted.
Given how many variations of browser-based office suites now exist, I just don't see the point in starting from the OOO design or code.
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Is it? I thought that Collabora was a rebrand of KOffice, which was once a part of the entire KDE package
Re: uhh (Score:2)
Because the Europeans rather see Russia spy on them and steal secrets than have the USA's big tech biz spy on them and steal secrets
Re: uhh (Score:4, Informative)
> Ok, since they just refuse to answer the question, does anyone else know why OnlyOffice was chosen over LibreOffice?
> Because the Europeans rather see Russia spy on them and steal secrets than have the USA's big tech biz spy on them and steal secrets
LibreOffice is not USA's big tech, The Document Foundation is a German non-profit organization (Stiftung).
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Yep, and it is based on StarOffice that was also developed in Germany before it was acquired by Sun.
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So that's why they're basically rewriting it; getting rid of all the binary blobs and obfuscated stuff.
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Have binary blobs been confirmed to exist in OnlyOffice? Is that why they picked AGPL over GPL?