I'm disappointed it's not "Euroffice".
this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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"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
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.
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.
It can be self hosted, so the cloud can be a computer that you own.
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")
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
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?
LibreOffice is the fork that’s truly community driven. OpenOffice is open source but controlled by big tech.
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
if only there was a good, actively developed and highly regarded free and open source alternative whose name would be something like "LibreOffice"...
LibreOffice feels like a java app with 40 years of baggage and tech debt going back to Sun Microsystems
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.
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.
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.
No I think we should call it ~~Google~~Apache Wave. That would be a super intuitive name right??
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.
Oh right, I didn't know they had a web version I only saw the local edition. Glad to be corrected.
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.
right, thank you for pointing it out.
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.
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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.
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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.
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!
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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?
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