Before you get too excited, let me clarify that it is not your typical office suite like LibreOffice that you install on desktop systems. It is designed more for providing collaborative document portals for organizations.There is a new open source office suite. It’s called Euro-Office.They have also accused ONLYOFFICE of discouraging code contributions and lacking transparency.So, who’s side are you on? ONLYOFFICE or Euro-Office?This isn’t speculation. The intent is clearly stated on the Euro-Office GitHub repository:
What’s the issue with ONLYOFFICE?
So, Euro-Office aims to offer the same base software but with a “Made in Europe” label.ONLYOFFICE is understandably unhappy with this fork. A European alternative offering essentially the same product could impact their business significantly.ONLYOFFICE integration is already available in Nextcloud and many other collaboration platforms. These platforms want to offer an office suite that works seamlessly with popular Microsoft file formats.By forking ONLYOFFICE, they no longer have to rely on it. Instead, they can build and control their own “Made in Europe” solution. This could make it easier for them to offer their platforms to government administrations and organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements.And to be fair, they have built a solid product. It works very well with Microsoft Office file formats, which is often the biggest pain point for many users.The project has been initiated by Nextcloud and IONOS. Nextcloud is a well-known open source collaboration platform, and IONOS is primarily a server infrastructure provider.
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.
The issue arises from the fact that ONLYOFFICE originated in Russia and is largely developed by Russian developers. Due to the geopolitical situation, the company has moved operations to Latvia. A European fork could potentially push them to the sidelines.As the name suggests, it is a European effort and is primarily meant for European organizations and governments.ONLYOFFICE has accused Euro-Office of violating the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPLv3), stating:Another similar open source project is Collabora Online, which offers an online collaborative version of LibreOffice. However, ONLYOFFICE’s better compatibility with popular formats like DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX makes it a compelling choice.
Any argument that a modified or derivative version of the software may be distributed under a “pure” AGPLv3 license, excluding the additional conditions imposed pursuant to Section 7, is legally unfounded.
The right to create and distribute derivative works arises solely from the license grant. Such a grant is conditional and indivisible. Accordingly, any derivative work based on the original ONLYOFFICE code may be created and distributed only in compliance with all applicable license terms, including the additional conditions.
The creation of a derivative work does not give rise to an independent licensing regime free from the conditions under which the original code was obtained.
Conclusion
You see, open source ONLYOFFICE’s main business revolves around offering its collaborative product to enterprises and organizations. They do provide offline desktop applications for individuals, but their primary focus remains on the enterprise segment.In other words, it’s an online office suite that can be deployed within an organization and accessed via the web. It can also be integrated into other products, like Nextcloud to provide document editing capabilities.Well, Euro-Office is a fork of ONLYOFFICE, and they are not happy about it.
