FOSSPicks

Compatibility vs. Sovereignty

Few things illustrate the sometimes inflammatory politics of open source better than a project arriving wrapped in a flag. Euro-Office has been pitched as a sovereign European alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It was developed by a coalition of EU-based companies, including Nextcloud and IONOS, but its launch has already annoyed OnlyOffice's vendor, Ascensio System SIA, who initially claimed that the Euro-Office fork violated the terms of its GNU AGPLv3 license around attribution, branding, and licensing notices.

In early June, The Document Foundation also published an open letter to office suite users ahead of the Euro-Office announcement, criticizing claims that Euro-Office was the first open source office suite developed in Europe. OpenOffice.org launched in 2001 from the StarOffice codebase, which originated in Europe. LibreOffice followed in 2010. The Document Foundation also criticizes the fact that Euro-Office defaults to the Microsoft-developed OOXML format, arguing that this reinforces the tech giant's document-format lock-in. LibreOffice supporters argue that the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is the better foundation for independence, as evidenced by its adoption by parts of the public sector in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.

Still, if this argument over compatibility with Microsoft formats versus open standards sends more users toward LibreOffice or OnlyOffice, that's no bad thing.

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