this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Office EU - Europe's Open-Source Productivity Suite (office.eu)
submitted 1 day ago by Greenpepper@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org
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[–] baguette@piefed.social 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

This interview (Dutch) with the investor should, in my opinion, scare people away from it. It's just a bunch of none-answers and uncertainty

Q: Is that your plan with Office EU too? To sell it after a few years?

A: Tja, I am not sure about that. I can't see that far into the future, I don't know.

Q: So which apps don’t use Nextcloud?

A: Once we’re live, I’ll show you.

Q: Have you written any code around it yourselves?

A: A great deal has been written around it. (This is literally the whole answer to that question)

Q: Could you give an example of that? Will that be open source too?

Q: Well, look, you know what it is? I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this. You approached me. I’m saying: I’m not actually ready for this yet, because we’re sorting out a few things.

[–] sanzky@beehaw.org 12 points 1 day ago

this looks a lot like that "European X alternative" named "W" which was vaporware. I wish journalist were more critical with the claims of these people.

[–] MoonRaven@feddit.nl 6 points 1 day ago

And saying a free version will not come despite the FAQ saying it is..

[–] sherlock@feddit.nu 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why can't they just sponsor libreoffice rather than start their own?

[–] einkorn@feddit.org 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because then commercial companies couldn't earn a fortune in the process, of course! /s

[–] sherlock@feddit.nu 7 points 1 day ago

Sadly, this is probably why.

[–] Greenpepper@beehaw.org 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That was my first thought too. Apparently Euro-office is based on OnlyOffice. According to Nextcloud and IONOS "Libre Office is 35 years old and no longer the most innovative and fluid". For more detail: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Microsoft-alternative-Nextcloud-and-Ionos-develop-open-source-Euro-Office-11228123.html. I would like to hear what The Document Foundation thinks about this.

[–] anothermember@feddit.uk 13 points 1 day ago

Well 35 years is just false, even if you count it as a continuation from StarOffice that would be 41 years, I can't work out where they got 35 from, but that's a stupid argument anyway, it's only as old as its last version, OnlyOffice lacks features. I'm not impressed by any of this.

[–] Greenpepper@beehaw.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Answering my own question, here is a link to a blog post from The Document Foundation, https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/27/odf-is-the-future-ooxml-is-the-past/. The criticism of The Document Foundation centers around the use of Microsoft OOXML format in OnlyOffice instead of the truly open ODF standard in LibreOffice.

[–] anothermember@feddit.uk 2 points 20 hours ago

I see that Euro-Office claims to support ODF and that doesn't seem like a direct response to them. My criticism still stands though.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 4 points 20 hours ago

... ok, obvious problems that need to be addressed (and why not make it a nonprofit?), but I'm honestly impressed Microslop doesn't own all the domain extensions for the office domain.

[–] EffortlessGrace@piefed.social 13 points 1 day ago

LibreOffice:

[–] Greenpepper@beehaw.org 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reading from Wikipedia: Euro-Office is an upcoming open-source office suite and collaborative software platform based on OnlyOffice that provides editors for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs. The software includes web-based, desktop, and mobile applications designed for document creation, editing, and collaborative work

[–] clb92@feddit.dk 4 points 20 hours ago

Ah, so it's basically just OnlyOffice (and a few other apps?) in a wrapper, provided as a hosted solution.

[–] pfr@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

It's just straight up Nextcloud with a bunch of app integration