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ZDNET's key takeaways
- The first stable release of Euro-Office, an open-source office suite alternative, is out now.
- Positioned as a cornerstone of EU digital sovereignty, it's not ready for prime time.
- Opposition from other open-source parties isn't helping.
If digital sovereignty is important to you, and it certainly is in the European Union (EU), then you'll be pleased to know that Euro‑Office, a new open-source browser‑based office suite alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, has officially reached its first stable release.
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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.
Euro‑Office hits 1.0
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.
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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."
The result, to be frank, is still a little rough. The ribbon UI will make any Microsoft Office user feel at home. At the same time, the frontend still carries OnlyOffice branding in places, and the menus and dialogs feel dated. That said, the software is usable.
While I'm not able to give Euro-Office a full review at this point, I can say that it runs well on my NextCloud instance running on a Rocky Linux server. Rocky is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone.
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I've found that the core editor works and that real‑time collaboration is functional, but the configuration is, in a word, fiddly. Now I can deal with that issue, but I've been fiddling with Linux server applications since before many of you were born. I strongly advise most people to use NextCloud Hub 26 Spring or another ready-to-go package.
I must also say that, at this point, the release is more of a tech preview than a finished product. I advise against deploying the software in production yet, unless you are comfortable debugging integration issues. In a few months, I expect it will be a different story.
The sovereignty narrative
Euro‑Office is built as a fork of OnlyOffice's open‑source core. OnlyOffice's vendor, Ascensio System SIA, initially argued that the fork violated the terms of its GNU AGPLv3 licensing. The company accused Euro‑Office backers of failing to comply with attribution and branding requirements. AGPL's co-author, Bradley Kuhn, agrees with the Euro-Office developers' licensing stance. Subsequent discussions reportedly resolved the licensing dispute in time for the June launch.
An important side issue is that Euro‑Office supporters frame the fork as a necessary move to ensure that key features and governance align with European public‑sector requirements. They cite concerns about OnlyOffice's strategic decisions, transparency, and geopolitical ties with Russia.
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The supporters argue that shifting control over development, hosting, and legal jurisdiction to European entities is essential for governments and public institutions to trust an office suite as part of a broader sovereign cloud stack.
TDF pushes back
TDF, which oversees LibreOffice and champions the Open Document Format (ODF), has emerged as Euro‑Office's most vocal critic. In its June 7 open letter, TDF disputes Euro‑Office's marketing claim of being "the first European open‑source office suite," pointing instead to a lineage that includes StarOffice‑derived OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice itself, both with deep European roots.
TDF's leadership argues that Euro‑Office's messaging risks rewriting history and diminishing the role that existing European office suites have played in making digital sovereignty a mainstream policy goal. The letter portrays Euro‑Office as "the latest of the office suites developed in Europe, and not the first," suggesting that claims to the contrary mislead policymakers and users about the landscape of European productivity tools.
The heart of the dispute
Beyond branding, TDF's central objection is Euro‑Office's decision to default to Microsoft's OOXML formats rather than ODF for saving documents. TDF notes that OOXML is a complex ISO standard designed around Microsoft Office's behavior and, in practice, controlled by Microsoft, arguing that making it the default format undermines any claim to genuine independence from Redmond.
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TDF draws a sharp line between compatibility with Microsoft formats, which it calls a pragmatic necessity, and using those formats as the native default in public‑sector deployments. "Compatibility is not sovereignty," TDF warned, asserting that a European‑branded suite that saves every file in OOXML "is de facto an ally of Microsoft in its content lock‑in strategy," regardless of where servers are hosted or which organizations oversee the code.
I covered the ODF vs OOXML fights like paint back in the mid-to-late 2000s. While I still prefer ODF, the simple truth is that, like it or lump it, Microsoft Office formats are what most people use every day.
Euro‑Office supporters are right to say that European public‑sector migrations cannot succeed without high‑fidelity support for Office documents that organizations already rely on, and promising "full compatibility with Microsoft formats" is a pragmatic requirement, not a capitulation.
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The supporters say ODF support is on the roadmap and emphasize that the project's governance, licensing, and hosting are all based in Europe. They argue that the approach meaningfully shifts control away from US hyperscalers and proprietary SaaS suites.
Wasting time on sparring
It also doesn't help that TDF has its own internal fights over governance and the treatment of core developers. I've liked TDF since it was founded, but I find it troubling that the organization, facing its own internal turmoil, is pushing against a major open-source office project. It also doesn't escape my attention that the organization now has its own horse in the online office race: a revival of LibreOffice Online.
Really, folks, instead of fussing over who's more open-source, can't we agree to compete in the marketplace, not on social media? What good does it do for new open-source office suite supporters to spar with each other when Microsoft 365 and Google Workplace have 96% of the online office market?
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