Euro-Office 1.0 Arrives To Open-Source Infighting: 'Compatibility Is Not Sovereignty'

Euro-Office 1.0 Arrives To Open-Source Infighting: 'Compatibility Is Not Sovereignty' (zdnet.com) 14 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:3) 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. Re: (Score:3) 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:2) OOXML is a fake standard it's impossible to fully implement. I smell a contradiction (Score:3) "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. Re: (Score:2) "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. Re: (Score:2) 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". Re: (Score:1) 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. Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Browsers are not the cloud. Nope (Score:3) Start in Minutes, Move at Your Pace Step 1 Link your Microsoft or Google account. LOL Re: (Score:2) But what you linked is not what this article is discussion. 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:2) This atlases keeps documents out of US hands because of the cloud act. It can only ge stronger as time goes by