Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

European outfits Ionos and Nextcloud have launched Euro-Office, a fork of the OnlyOffice cloud-based productivity suite aimed at orgs with qualms around sovereignty, provoking an angry response from the original developer. Two fingers, photo via Shutterstock Fork YOU! Sure, take the code. Then what? FROM THE ARCHIVES A few …

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blow it this time

although I suspect they already have.

Let's see. I'd love the best. But 20 years experience suggests the worst.

[ComicalEngineer]

More fragmentation of effort

Just what we needed!

Must admit that I use LibreOffice 99% of the time (for over 20 years) other than when a particular customer (infrequently) sends me a .docx or .xlsx file.

I've personally never liked the space hogging MS Ribbon. Others may disagree, but it just hogs too much screen space for me working on a laptop, I also don't like the fact that the transition from the classic 2003 menu interface now requires an additional keystroke to achieve the same end. (I use keyboard in preference to mouse).

I use Collabora on my ipad if travelling light and find it generally ok.

Personal opinion only, splitting down and down and down the size of development teams is not a good thing and just leads to dilution of effort.

Sometimes there can just be too much choice!

[DoctorNine]

Re: More fragmentation of effort

I personally use LibreOffice even if the do send me a .doc or .xlsx, unless there is a grave formatting issue. i just like it best.

I am going cold turkey on M$ for any equipment I own.

My employer requires Windows 11 and Office Suite, so they can do Teams meetings and Cloud collaborations. But the only time I use that laptop, is for specific functions I can't do on my own iron, requiring their authorizations. Less than 10% of my work at this point.

I agree with your assessment about divided effort as well. And frankly, if this new distro has anything at all to do with Russians, they can bloody eff right off with the thing...

[retiredFool]

Re: More fragmentation of effort

I've never used MS Office, so not sure how to compare. I used Frame back in the 80's/90's on NIX, and then Frame under Adobe decided not to go with their beta Linux port. So I tried Star/Open/Libre Office and use them now. Really I can't quite tell which one I'm using. I start soffice but the title says LibreOffice, so probably Libre. I find I can import most stuff fine. I think one time I had to ask the client to send me a pdf. In general though if Frame was still around, I'd be using Frame. Maker text format was great to work with and they had multi-book as well. For my internal documentation I went back to latex from Frame. I think Frame nailed the WYSIWIG and maintained a text format that was easily programmed/analyzed. Latex you have to run it to ensure changes are going to come up the way you want to see.

[The Indomitable Gall]

Re: More fragmentation of effort

The ribbon was a bit of unfortunate coincidental timing, because it came out as the business world was increasingly moving to widescreen monitors that were even less compatible with WYSIWYG display of A4 documents. I remember I ended up getting a sub-notebook with a widescreen monitor, and it was like trying to read an A4 sheet through a letterbox with the ribbon on. But if I had the ribbon set to only open on mouseover, my document would keep automatically jump-scrolling back and forth. Infuriating.

[retiredFool]

Re: More fragmentation of effort

I think I remember some custom system that had a tall narrow display, mimicking the size of an A4 sheet. Maybe 1980's when word processing was taking off. It almost had to have been CRT based given the time frame I'm thinking. Again as I recall, all it did was word processing, so of course short lived.

[_wojtek]

politics and power grabs...

I'm quite confused...

I use almost exclusive LO and I like it a lot (not really a fan of online suites). Tried OnlyOffice and have it on disk but defualting tu MSO formats just rub me the wrong way...

As for the conflicts:

- IANAL but OnlyOffice stance seems weird at other very least... AGPL is mostly (as I understand) time prevent others making money by selling the software; next cloud doesn't do that as far as I know?

- I read Collabora blog post / rant and can't parse it... reads more like a stream KF thought... =,=

[robinsonb5]

Re: politics and power grabs...

> AGPL is mostly (as I understand) time prevent others making money by selling the software;

Not really, no - neither the GPL nor the AGPL aims to prevent people making money by selling the software. The GPL's main aim is to ensure that anyone who receives a compiled binary is able to access the source code, make changes and distribute their own version if they wish. You might argue that this makes selling the software less viable, but that's a side-effect, not the main thrust.

The AGPL was written to address a problem with the traditional GPL, which is that when GPL software is used to power an online service, the user is never given the actual compiled binary, and thus the license clauses which entitle them to received source code are never triggered.

The AGPL solves that problem by mandating that if you run the software on a server and make it accessible to users over a network, those users have the same rights to the source code as recipients of an actual binary would have with the regular GPL. (That, of course, is why Google hates it with a passion.)

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: politics and power grabs...

Thank you for a concise explanation.

[kmorwath]

"but that's a side-effect, not the main thrust."

Bo, that's the whole reason behind the GPL. Stallman wanted it software for free, and kill commercial software development because he didn't make a living by writing software and selling software.

What is not viable is living of FOSS software, unless some other business - today, data hoarding and its use to make people less free - pays you, while exploiting a lot of free labour hiding that fact behind a paint of ideology.

[Adair]

Re: "but that's a side-effect, not the main thrust."

'free beer' happened to be a corollary of 'free speech', not a fundamental priority.

[kmorwath]

Re: "but that's a side-effect, not the main thrust."

No, it's the other way round - just asking for free beer makes you a freetard, so you neeed to hide it under some kind of higher freedom, a classic religious/idelogical move, hide your greed and lust behind some higher idea.... we've seen it for millenia....

[Sproggit]

Re: "but that's a side-effect, not the main thrust."

I think your comments, specifically, "Stallment wanted it [sic] software for free, and kill commercial software development because he didn't make a living by writing software and selling software", is not only factually wrong, but completely disingenuous.

The history behind the GPL is pretty well documented. See for example here:-

https://medium.com/curious-burrows/the-story-of-open-source-so-far-bfcb685d85a4

The actual origin of the GPL and the free software movement happened because of a faulty laser printer. The MIT Lab where Stallman was working in 1980 installed a Xerox 9700 laser printer, which turned out to be a bit glitchy. Stallman hunted down the engineers at Xerox and asked for a copy of the software so that he could modify it to deal with the glitch, but was told by a Xerox employee that they were unable to share the software because it belonged to Xerox and the company didn't want to disclose the code.

He spent a bit of time working through what a viable solution might look like, then in September 1983 announced a project to create a free operating system, that would be called GNU.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I hope you don't mind me correcting you here, but the distinction is really important. Your post suggested that Stallman sought to undermine people who did "make a living by writing and selling software", but this is also factually wrong. Most of the major contributors to the GNU/Linux ecosystem work for "other companies" - you can look at Linus Torvalds employment history and see that - and their employers allow them to spend time on open source projects because it brings benefits to the company for them to do so. Most of the major "Open Source" companies - like Red Hat or Canonical - operate as commercial entities, selling support. They seem to be pretty successful.

Open Source and profitability are not mutually exclusive.

[Liam Proven]

Re: politics and power grabs...

> AGPL is mostly (as I understand) time prevent others making money by selling the software

Absolutely not, and never was.

GPL is about preserving your rights as users of software: to see the source, be able to change it, and distribute your changes. The last 3 are unlike Microsoft "shared source" programs, notably.

AGPL extends that if you use software running on someone else's computer over a network connection.

[kmorwath]

I'm always dismayed by the tribal wars in the FOSS projects...

... they talk a lot about things they forget as soon as they are directly impacted, like a bunch of old spinters...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm always dismayed by the tribal wars in the FOSS projects...

If IONOS are involved, surely Aunt Hilda wrote it in under an hour ???

[cd]

Re: I'm always dismayed by the tribal wars in the FOSS projects...

cd's Law of Humanity #1...

Every human organisation will eventually betray its founding cause in order to save itself.

[kmorwath]

Re: I'm always dismayed by the tribal wars in the FOSS projects...

Every human organisation will eventually betray its founding cause in order to save itself for someone to grab power and never leave it.

[GidaBrasti]

Interoperability is key

Does it matter if it has a ribbon or a braid ? If the icons dance the Tango or emerge at night with the Dracula?

As long as documents can be truly compatible through and through, let the coders have fun.

Only interoperability will bring down M$, nothing else.

After all, it is all that matters.

PS: Bring back WordPerfect.5.1 !

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Interoperability is key

The UI does matter. It's one of the objections you'll find about LO not (allegedly) having a ribbon. It matters so much that MS changed their UI after they'd been forced - after a fashion - to standardise their file format. By using their market strength to force every user to adapt to a different UI they managed to raise a generation of users who really don't know anything different than the ribbon nor that MS Office originally had a CUA-based (OK, Liam, partial. pace) UI like LO.

[frankvw]

Re: Interoperability is key

"PS: Bring back WordPerfect.5.1 !"

Haven't tried 5.1 (I always hated WP 5.x) but WP4.2 which I loved fiercely runs fine in DosBox. Printer support can be challenging, although I have managed to get USB-to-RS232 and USB-to-Centronix (harder to find but does exist) working in DoxBox as COM1 and LPT1, respectively. At which point you'll still have to MacGyver up your own WP printer drivers, but if you have too much time on your hands over the Easter weekend, here's one way to spend it.

[ChoHag]

The presence of the Russian language is nothing to be concerned about, in comments of all things, as the Russian language is quite distinct from Russia the country. Bringing it up is like complaining that the presense of English anywhere suggests a close relationship with the orange turd in the white half-house.

Pretty much everybody who lives north of India between Italy and China speaks English and Russian in addition to their own language which suggests that the complainers are either ignorant, racist, or playing politics.

Or D) all of the above.

[Doctor Syntax]

This was announced and debated in another place a few days earlier. One thing that emerged there was that there was quite a tangle of of companies and branding which seemed intended to disguise the Russian origins.

[tiggity]

Russian origins - so what.

Russia does bad thins.

Ukraine does bad things.

UK * does bad things.

USA does bad things.

Israel does bad things.

China does bad things.

etc, etc.

As someone who tries to be an ethical consumer I can tell you it's essentially impossible, generally when looking at a particular country its a matter of where are they on the scale between slightly bad & totally evil. Plus in many countries, a lot of the populace are nice people**, sadly those that seek & gain power generally tend to be those who should least be in a position of power.

* I say that as someone who lives in the UK ("citizen" by birth, so no oath needed, fortunate as I would never swear an oath that invokes swearing to god and allegiance to the Royal family - atheist Republican here!)

** I have visited USA & Russia & vast majority of people I met were nice enough (harder to tell with Russia visit as my Russian was adequate, but not amazing at the time (awful now - I was young when I visited so was able to "crash course" learn in a relatively short while - with the drawback that more quickly forgotten than learning a language over a long timescale, though I'm one of those people who does forget a skill if they do not use it regularly however deeply it was learned e.g. I no longer do any powerboating & have totally forgotten how to tie a bowline, something I could do with me eyes shut & hands behind my back years ago)

[Doctor Syntax]

Russian origins, are incompatible with sovereign status. The same applies to US services. And what does it tell you if the vendor seeks to obscure the origin?

[jpennycook]

R7 Office

Is that named after the space rocket (and failed ICBM) of the same name, these days replaced by Soyuz?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_Semyorka

[kamen_n]

Re: R7 Office

Ostensibly, yes.

In their rather brutal tearing-down of OnlyOffice over here: https://www.collaboraonline.com/comparing-collabora-with-onlyoffice/

... Collabora Office state that:

"As an interesting aside, the name R7 is derived from the world’s first intercontinental ballistic thermonuclear missile which also launched Sputnik."

Of course, bias has to factor in that statement, but, indeed, there does seem to be a connection between OnlyOffice and the Russian Ministry of Defense, which really hasn't been very defensive as of late.

[Camilla Smythe]

Just install Linux

Sure it comes with LibreOffice which it is still a Wanky Word Processor but they are all Wank.

Hands up anyone who does not think Word Processors are Wank?

OK... Anyone with their hands up... Fuck off into the Lava.

FFS. Word Processor Wars

[Camilla Smythe]

Re: Just install Linux

There you go.

At least Six Downvoters who know how to express their lack of value in a WankProcessor and get all smug about their presentation skills.

ITMT ROTW gets to transcribe "Insert Peg A into Slot B" using a Text Editor.

Well Done.

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: Just install Linux

Are you by any chance amanfrommars' mum? Just curious.

[Snarkmonster]

Forking frenzy

Last time there was a forking frenzy at my office, HR got very, VERY upset.

[Doctor Syntax]

I wonder if it runs along these lines:

1. Microsoft comes from the US.

2. Trump has been assiduous in persuading Europe that, at least for SaaS products the US can no longer be relied on.

3. Therefore Europe needs a SaaS office suite that's European.

4. The existing options in that line are Collabora and OnlyOffice

5. Collabora comes from the UK.

6. They've remembered Brexit and in the current swirling atmosphere of distrust anything from the UK is also suspect, especially as Starmer doesn't want to break things off with the US.

7. OnlyOffice is Russian but that can be overcome by forking.

8. LibreOffice, with its large input from Collabora is collateral damage.

There may, however,be more than collateral damage in regard to LO. Ionos and NextCloud's interests are with online solutions and LO is a rival. If The Document Foundation can be persuaded to damage itself by breaking up with Collabora so much the better from their point of view.

Somebody needs to knock their heads together and try to knock some sense into them because this is just plain stupidity at a time when we need clear thinking.

[doublelayer]

I can only speculate, but a lot of this looks like people expecting that somebody is going to pass a law mandating a single project, likely involving a bunch of users and funding going to that project, so they're trying to position themselves to be the recipient. If that involves getting rid of people outside the area so you can claim that you're the most European, then why not; politicians probably don't understand the harms that causes, and some of them think that's a positive because surely, not having any developers outside the countries in the plan means there's more sovereignty...somehow.

[Scotech]

Having things under your jurisdiction is a key metric of sovereignty, so yeah, it demonstrably would result in 'more sovereignty' if the developers and all development activity took place within the EU. It's not a dumb play, and if it also happens to increase competition in the office productivity software space, that's not a bad thing - the dead wood will get cleared out in the end. It's a shame if someone's business or pet project dies as a result of that, but that's just free market economics at play, and just simply being open source or having an ideological bent doesn't exempt you from that. If your product is good, it'll survive, maybe even thrive.

[doublelayer]

"Having things under your jurisdiction is a key metric of sovereignty, so yeah, it demonstrably would result in 'more sovereignty' if the developers and all development activity took place within the EU."

That depends what they want sovereignty to give them. If we use your definition, then tautologically they'd get it, but that doesn't prove that it did anything they wanted. There can be plenty of sovereignty of the important parts, where your data is and who controls your systems, when you run software with local administrators on local machines even if that software wasn't written entirely locally, and more if you have the ability to continue maintenance and improvement of that software locally if you need to.

"if it also happens to increase competition in the office productivity software space, that's not a bad thing"

Fragmentation tends not to help with software quality. There are lots of projects which started as forks of something else and ended as forks of something else because the people forking it wanted their name and their donation button but didn't do all that much to change the software. If EuroOffice turns out to have a bunch of developers who didn't work on office software beforehand but now are busy building new features, you might be correct. Do you see evidence that they have? From the perspective of the EU governments, quality and speed of a patch might be more important than the dev who wrote it being Canadian.

[Doctor Syntax]

It's difficult to visualise a law mandating projects but simply policies regarding government use would be sufficient. It seems the more forward thinking European governments are already making their own choices so it's likely to be a piece-meal decision with the European Commission, if that's your "somebody" would be only one of those. I doubt an attempt at anything more binding on governments would go down well with those who have already made their choices which seem to favour LO rather than a cloud-based suite.

Of course such a policy might also specify open file formats in which case Euro-Office would have to make a switch there.

[doublelayer]

Mandates can cover only specific areas. Some EU proposals and many online comments encouraging them have suggested having single software standards that would apply to EU central government and member state government, likely also including private companies that work for them. The EU would certainly not mandate that everyone there use it, but deciding that all those governments will use or strive to migrate to a specific, supported variant is also a mandate and one that would have large effects. The more important part is the proposed funding to projects critical to the sovereign computing initiatives which, if they actually do it, is a lot of incentive for whichever projects happen to be chosen and is almost certainly a one-takes-all thing per sector because separate grants to every competing office program, even the ones that are forks of each other, is so inefficient even politicians would notice it.

[Richard 12]

Policy already does mandate open formats, so that is something they'll need to change. This is actually why Word and Excel support ODF.

Changing the default Save As format is trivial, of course.

[herman]

That law was already passed. EU systems have to be local.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"this is just plain stupidity at a time when we need clear thinking."

Amen.

Currently a plea with greater, nay universal, applicability and urgency.

…Blowin' in the Wind…

[Anonymous Coward]

HCL in India bought the carcass and IP of Lotus from IBM in 2018. Perhaps it’s due for a “not ‘Merican” comeback.

AMI Pro and 123 anyone ?

[Doctor Syntax]

"LibreOffice is 35 years old and no longer the most innovative and fluid."

Translation: It's a mature product with less scope for tinkering. Ideal from a user PoV.

If someone wants to be innovative with LO there are a few big gaps.

One is to add a comms - email etc. cf TBird - contacts and calendar. There's scope for a lot of improvement over the competition there. For instance the comms side needs password management - why not roll in general password managment, KeePass style?

Another gap is that the document standards include a graphics standard which seems to make provision for multiple layers of both PNG and SVG. I've never seen any application use it. LO Draw is something different altogether.

Finally Base really needs revisiting. It's a commonplace that users use spreadsheets when they should really be using a databse application which probably means real database managers are too complecated for them to use. That needs fixing.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"too complicated for them to use"

"It's a commonplace that users use spreadsheets when they should really be using a databse application which probably means real database managers are too complecated for them to use."

The awful truth is that spreadsheets are actually also too complicated for users but they are deluded or have been deluded in believing otherwise.

The cockup·ery and general fuckery inflicted by spreadsheets over the years would lead me to ban the buggers. I mean spreadsheets but including users would be a bonus.

When you analyse what a spreadsheet program is, in abstract, you realise it is basically taking a structured model·view·controller (MVC) application and giving it a whiz in a Waring blender.

Tabular display and input of data is fine, but the code connecting these two and with stored data (eg database) ought to be strictly separated and preferably declarative.

[that one in the corner]

Re: "too complicated for them to use"

> Tabular display and input of data is

What the office computers[1] used to HAVE to use on big blackboards stretched across the long wall of the room, as they calculated forecasts by hand - and had a team one blackboard behind double-checking their work!

Small businesses could make do with a drafting table and a long sheet of paper (and the Finance Officers had actual contact with all the numbers as they wrote them down, allowing them to spot anomalies because they were unconsciously running validation rules that nobody bothers to encode into Excel).

Mechanising those blackboards on VDUs, for use by the people who had been trained in the old ways, was a boon.

But now everyone and their gerbil[2] has spreadsheets on their laptops, with naff all training ("Why pay for training, it is INTUITIVE!"), sticking religiously to the same UI, when it has been removed from necessity (on the blackboards, that UI *is* the internal mechanism) is just - weird. If not outright doolally.

It is no wonder that people use spreadsheets as databases - the first thing you had to do on the blackboards was manually copy the input figures from a pile of paperwork into relevant columns (the ones that were painted permanently on the walls). So you "save time" by typing them directly into your laptop spreadsheet. Then add in the emails, 'cos you have all that extra space without sellotaping pages over the door. And so it goes. But, of course, on the biggest blackboards, it wasn't the spreadsheet computers who copied those columns, they had juniors who fetched the data for them. A function that was forgotten when VisiCalc came along (not that I blame them, the Apple ][ was good but had its limits). Nowadays, you can write a macro that fetches from your database, but by the time your business *has* a database, things are getting so built up and complex[3] you may as well just paste your numbers in directly...

[1] men in suits, as the business world didn't trust women to do arithmetic, unlike the sciences

[2] dogs being too sensible

[3] if every user *did* know how to organise their own databases, keeping track of who is storing what and where becomes a nightmare - and then the "database guys" insist that they keep the single source of truth, even though (if they are any bleeping good at their job) they are properly positioned to read simple text files, that Fred can understand and update, into cleverer formats for bulk processing! You do *not* need everybody who owns some data to learn how to use that ruddy database frontend - oh, look, the simple frontend is now a familiar spreadsheet interface - aaaaaarrrrrrggghhhhh!!!!!

[Scotech]

I always wondered why there was never an open-source equivalent to MS Access. It's dire, and in its time it was just as abused as Excel 'databases', but it did make sense to the average spreadsheetDB user. It seems like it ought to be pretty easy to achieve these days. Of course, everything is cloudy nowadays, and MS are trying to pretend Access never existed, but there's still plenty of use-cases I can think of for a simple, no frills, forms-over-data utility that's compact, self-contained and friendly enough for the average spreadsheet user to just pick up and run with.

[Doctor Syntax]

It's decades since I looked at Access so I don't know if it looks much different now but back then it did seem like a reasonably user-accessible toy database product. In particular the visual database designer would have been a great help. Base was never an adequate replacement for that. Neither was Kexi which was supposed to be the KDE Office offering.

[Cliffwilliams44]

The problem with Access is that the file format is (was? I have not had to support it in years) unstable! If you did not regularly run maintenance on the database files, eventually they would corrupt beyond use! Many a time I've had a nice young lady who had an Access database with very important data become hopelessly corrupted! Of course there was no backup because it was on her local drive, because running it from the network was slow!

That's why in most companies I've worked for Access was banned!

[WolfFan]

That’s why there has been a ‘Compact & Repair’ button in Access for a Very Long Time (2007? 2003? Earlier?). If you hit that button, the database would be resized, usually but not always smaller, sometimes a LOT smaller if someone had put in a lot of Short Text fields under 50 characters in size, and, more importantly, the corruption would be rolled back. A bit. In Ye Olden Daze I would have a look at all Access databases I had access to in rotation. This would typically mean that (or, later, a minion) would hit Compact & Repair maybe once a month. And, of course, if we had access to the Access databases, those databases were being backed up. We would make a point of recommending, in writing, to the ysers that they give us access, or, failing that, they they hit Compact & Repair themselves on a regular basis and make their own backups. Some users, of coure, Knew Better. They usually regretted it and came to us to try to recover their corrupted database. Usually we couldn’t, and if there was a complaint to higher-higher, would point to the wriiten procedures which the users had Known Better than to follow.

If the users were halfway competent there would be Excel or RTF files of some of the tables/queries/etc, so the DB could be rebuilt fairly quickly. However, quite a few of those who Knew Better didn’t have anything other than the DB. How sad. Too bad. Not my problem.

[Liam Proven]

You answer your own question.

> MS Access. It's dire

That's why not.

Better a FOSS Claris FileMaker or Lotus Approach, IMHO.

[Richard 12]

The missing product is a visual database designer, form designer, some reasonable scripting language to stick it together - and importantly, a sane database back end.

The reasons Access sucked were almost exclusively because of the Jet engine, not the product itself. It worked pretty well as a prototyping solution, and given a decent database back end it was fine as a quick front-end designer.

Visual Basic was a decent choice for the time, these days I'd suggest Python if someone were to make a new one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?

Why would there be "open-source equivalent to MS Access" when Microsoft have gone out of their way to stop anyone actually using it ?

Doesn't that mean that no one actually cares

[dmesg]

No, it means they wanted to force everyone to pay for SQLServer. And a MS-certified DBA, who had to keep taking MS courses and MS tests to maintain their certification.

[DS999]

Pretty sure that

It is possible to change LibreOffice's defaults to save in Microsoft formats.

But why is that considered an advantage at all? Isn't the point of moving to a different office solution to get away from Microsoft? Why would you want to use their file formats by default? I get that some stuff needs to be saved that way because the people on the other end are using Microsoft, but if you save everything that way by default even after you've left MSOffice behind you'll never really get away from them.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Pretty sure that

It's not even a matter of having to go into a menu to go and change default - on first trying to save to a microsoft "format", it merely pops up a box advising you to use a real format instead and that box also contains the option to save anyway and you are not reminded again.

That is a "problem", as it's considered bad for there even to be a possibility for the user to learn that there's a problem with microsoft's proprietary "formats".

[NATTtrash]

Re: Pretty sure that

As always the problem is located between the keyboard and the chair...

[Scotech]

Re: Pretty sure that

Or it's just considered bad to be trying to pitch ideology at someone who neither knows nor cares about file formats beyond just wanting to get their work done, except now their software is stopping them until they declare that they truly are a heretic who can't be saved? Telling the user they're wrong is a bad way to do it. Just ask neutrally on first run, default to what most users are likely to want (whether you agree with their choice or not), and respect their choice, maybe even just put in a small message in the save window that unobtrusively explains why MS formats are bad whenever saving in that format, giving them a littlenudge, just without getting in the user's way. Of course, LO doesn't really want the users who'd pick MS Office format and move on, and that's the real rub here. They don't want to replace MS, they want to cater to a tiny pool of people who care about 'Libre' principles. Which is fine - but you can't have it both ways. If you want to specifically cater to a niche, you can't then complain that the majority don't want to come join you.

I use LO and ODF file formats myself, BTW - I just don't get evangelical about it, and I send documents to others in the standard MS formats because realistically, I'm the crank using a niche product, and they're the mainstream who are almost certainly going to be opening it in MS Office.

[DS999]

Re: Pretty sure that

Just ask neutrally on first run

No. This is about EU countries using this for government functions, right? What the user wants doesn't enter into it, it is what their government (i.e. their employer) decides the default should be.

You're right about asking if you're talking individual use, but once you are working for someone else what they want matters, not what you want.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Pretty sure that

>it's just considered bad to be trying to pitch ideology at someone

Wow, wanting people to not lose their work and also not wanting humanity to continue losing is extreme ideology?

I must exceed extremist! (Oh yeah!).

>someone who neither knows nor cares about file formats beyond just wanting to get their work done

If you want to get work done and for it to stay done, you need to know and care what file formats you are using.

If you use proprietary faux-formats, that are intentionally broken every few years, there is a 100% guarantee after the change, you will at least waste time handling the changes and in the worst case, lose work due to the change and need to start again.

XML is a terrible format, considering that even if the file actually follows a format, it is hard to parse by both humans and computers, but if you save an ODF file with libreoffice today, you can expect it to be perfectly readable for decades.

>except now their software is stopping them until they declare that they truly are a heretic who can't be saved?

Wow, a pop-up box that gives the user good advice to not make a common mistake (for personal files saved to your computer for later use with libreoffice, saving to a microsoft faux-format is always a mistake), but allows the user in only one more action, once, the option to confirm that saving in such faux-formats was not a mistake, is treating the user as a heretic?

What is your opinion on the typical multiple choice dark-patterns to do things the user wants to do, but the master doesn't really want them to do, that are common in proprietary software?

>Telling the user they're wrong is a bad way to do it.

That is not what the pop-up box says.

> Just ask neutrally on first run

Why ask something on the first run that may not be applicable?

It makes more sense to ask neutrally when a mistake is about to be made.

>default to what most users are likely to want (whether you agree with their choice or not), and respect their choice, maybe even just put in a small message in the save window that unobtrusively explains why MS formats are bad whenever saving in that format, giving them a littlenudge, just without getting in the user's way.

Most users seems to want to save files to their computer for later personal usage and thus the default to ODF is correct.

If that is not the case, the user's choice is respected - they can choose whether to confirm saving to the faux-format in one operation, once and the pop-up box also unobtrustively links to why m$'s faux-formats are bad (I'm not sure if it's technically possible to portably add a link to the save window (which is OS-specific in GtK), or at least it takes a lot of work to do so, while a link in a pop-up box is portable and doesn't take too long to implement (is it OS-generic in GtK?)).

>Of course, LO doesn't really want the users who'd pick MS Office format and move on, and that's the real rub here. They don't want to replace MS, they want to cater to a tiny pool of people who care about 'Libre' principles.

They obviously wish to provide a free replacement to microsoft, considering that it has windows and macos builds.

If they only cared about catering to those who care about freedom, there would only be source code available for download that you can go and compile on GNU/Linux-libre.

The users can pick proprietary and move on.

>I send documents to others in the standard MS formats

Anything from m$ is intentionally NOT a format and also NOT in any way standardized.

You cannot reliably send documents from 2 WC's without a chance of the formatting changing, even on the same windows version and the same version of office (printer settings can change how documents render after all).

If I want to send documents to people, I use pdf, as that is standardized and has a specification (that everyone but Adobe mostly follows), thus I can expect it to display correctly no matter the computer or OS as long as the receiver is not using "Adobe Reader" (which most people are smart enough not to use).

I do not send people m$ documents unprompted, as that would obviously be the immoral act of supporting the usage of office (which a lot of people are dumb enough to use).

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Pretty sure that

Most people just want something they can afford and works. It really is that simple. As things stand I see home users taking up LO* because it fulfills that requirement. Preaching at them will not help them make that decision and it might well put them off.

* Strictly speaking, it's local support people installing it for them.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Pretty sure that

You don't need to state the obvious to me.

I state the obvious at length, because I get the feeling that certain commenters need it to understand.

Having a pop-up box that warns about an unfortunate reality is not preaching.

Proprietary software does far more than a single pop-up box, but that doesn't seem to put many off - for some reason many just take it.

If you would like me to preach about proprietary software and its consequences, explaining all the scheming around OOXML and MOX, with links, just give the word.

[tiggity]

Re: Pretty sure that

@Eric 9001

"XML is a terrible format, considering that even if the file actually follows a format, it is hard to parse by both humans and computers"

XML is fine, for anyone used to HTML.

It is storage expensive, being quite verbose (but that's not much of an issue these days where storage is hefty & cheap). A lot more human readable than e.g. JSON data with added benefit that I can run a quick XSLT transform and can convert it to HTML of my choosing* (or even PDF if I use XSL-FO).

* or paste it directly into HTML and let CSS do the formatting work based on the XML directly, but my preference is to have XSLT conversion as you can do surprising** amounts of additional processing on the data with XSLT.

** My XSLT skills are reasonable, but it's astonishing what (& how quickly) those with stellar XSLT skills can achieve (doffs hat to Michael Kay in particular)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Pretty sure that

"They don't want to replace MS, they want to cater to a tiny pool of people who care about 'Libre' principles."

??????

Why should they?

I know a number of people who run Windows at home and most, I think, started out with MS Office. One, however, for as long as I've known her, has been using LO* and I don't know her history behind that. Several others recently have made the forced move to a new computer with W11. There are a number of people locally who have made a business of looking after home users who are setting things up for such users. They mostly seem to be installing LO although one has something else, I think, WPS Office. They don't particularly care about what you term 'Libre' principles, they just want something that doesn't cost and arm and a leg and doesn't have to be used online. That's potentially the entire home user pool.

Maybe it's also the small business pool or at least such part of it as wants to resist having to put their business on somebody else's computer.

* She knows I also use LO but still sends me docx files of posters to be converted into JPEG images.

[ianbetteridge]

Re: Pretty sure that

If you're working with clients/customers, you are almost certainly going to exchange files in Word/Excel/PowerPoint formats regularly. If your users have to remember to "Save as..." .doc... well, they won't. Cue wasted time.

[Richard 12]

Re: Pretty sure that

MS Word also supports ODT and silently opens it.

MS Word complains when you save, saying that "some features aren't supported", which is a truly dark pattern when you opened an ODT in the first place.

MS Office supports ODF because they were forced to, and they're still not happy about it.

[doublelayer]

Re: Pretty sure that

"MS Word complains when you save, saying that "some features aren't supported", which is a truly dark pattern when you opened an ODT in the first place."

How does that compare to what LibreOffice says if you open a Docx and try to save it as one:

Non-standard file format

This document may contain formatting or content that cannot be saved in the currently selected file format “Word 2010–365 Document (*.docx)”.

Use the default ODF file format (*.odt) to be sure that the document is saved correctly.

That seems very similar to me, and it's equally global, with no scanning to detect whether there is any known compatibility problem. In my experience, there very likely isn't a problem as I've been sending people docx files from LibreOffice for years without a single complaint, but I don't use anything very complex.

[druck]

Re: Pretty sure that

One is warning you that saving in a properly defined and validated document standard protects you from compatibility issues.

One is warning that not saving in a poorly documented non standard format is bad for their ability to lock you in to proprietary software.

I'll let you work out which is which.

[doublelayer]

Re: Pretty sure that

Ah, I understand now. They say almost exactly the same thing, but it's okay when the person you like says it. They are both saying it for the same reason: they have implemented compatibility with the other format and think they've done it correctly, though that's a much newer experience for Microsoft as they clearly didn't want to as much as LibreOffice wanted to implement docx support, but they don't want to guarantee that support. It makes sense in both cases.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Pretty sure that

microsoft's ODF support is intentionally broken to ensure failures happen, while also technically meeting a requirement that ODF is "supported".

As ODF is fully specified and the standards document is of reasonable length, there is no excuse as to why microsoft doesn't implement it to the standard.

As for "OOXML", that is thousands and thousands of pages of incomplete specifications (it seems microsoft decided to pretend to make a standard, by going and publishing a redacted version of their internal documentation they don't follow anyway - what Office implements is Microsoft Office XML (MOX)).

There's parts like; https://c-rex.net/samples/ooxml/e1/part4/OOXML_P4_DOCX_autoSpaceLikeWord95_topic_ID0EWPBZ.html where Word 95 auto-spacing needs to be emulated - but of course the documentation intentionally lacks the critical information as the relevant auto-spacing rules.

m$ Office also does things like dumping a C-struct from memory, XML ENCODING IT and then shoving that into the XML mess - which is not documented in "OOXML".

For LibreOffice to be able to process such XML struct required quite a bit of reverse engineering.

m$ Office still doesn't follow "OOXML" either, thus if LibreOffice saves a "OOXML" documentation to what the specification says, Office won't read it correctly.

LibreOffice's reverse engineered MOX support is not complete and MOX cannot encode certain complicated data like dates correctly, thus I wouldn't be surprised to see formatting go missing and things to go wrong (which won't happen with ODF and standards compliant software) and the warning is therefore correct.

But every since the start, m$ office has been known for screwing up formatting - while it seems MOX formatting is less screwed up with LibreOffice!

But that's to be expected of a formatting only every produced for reasons of sabotage - after all, free software and also proprietary document software eventually added pretty good support for .doc and .ppt, thus .docx & .pptx etc were developed in incomprehensible XML (good luck parsing this one), to end such support and also to force the rent of newer m$ office software (sometimes available as an expensive plugin for the "old office version"), in order to be able to view the new format even on windows.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Pretty sure that

Why do people just make things up?

If you open a docx file, LibreOffice will save to a docx file.

The user is only warned about MOX once.

[DrewPH]

Re: Pretty sure that

My clients don't send me ODS or ODT - they send me XLSX and DOCX. And likewise when I send them documents I need to send them as XLSX and DOCX.

I'm thankful that I can use an office suite without paying Microsoft (with either money or personal info), and that's pretty much the extent of my ideology. LibreOffice is not bad, for most things it's good enough, and I'm grateful that it lets me set the M$ formats as the defaults because that simplifies my workflow a little. I don't understand how "never get away from them" fits here.

[LionelB]

Re: Pretty sure that

Point taken, but then there are people like myself whose sole usage cases for WP are (a) to read documents sent to me in .docx format, and (b) to fill in forms or otherwise update .docx documents which I have to return to people who melt down if they receive any document which is not in .docx format.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Pretty sure that

Part of the reason why things are so bad is because people don't refuse to be used by microsoft's formatting.

Even if a big baby will melt down and have a tantrum - everyone needs to man up for mankind and rise over the tantrum.

Such sort once tried me to submit a report in .docx format, I firmly said NO and told them that I would be submitting in pdf format and that's what I did.

[LionelB]

Re: Pretty sure that

Fine sentiments, and I've been known to do similar. Unfortunately sometimes the big baby is going to be paying me, or giving me the job. It's a question of picking one's fights.

[ecofeco]

Cloud based office suite?

I'll support if paid to, but would never allow it into MY house.

FFS. We're doomed.

[kamen_n]

Forking Hell...

Well, it has happened.

The fears I expressed here in a comment a few weeks ago - of the Collabora Office "soft fork" from LibreOffice turning into a "hard fork" - have come true all too soon. With Collabora having la crème de la crème of veteran, experienced, and damn good OpenOffice/LibreOffice developers on their payroll (the very people suspended from TDF membership), I really wouldn't bet on the future of LibreOffice, barring some serious change of strategy there.

Dang, I was very happy with LibreOffice taking care of all my desktop/local/offline needs, and Collabora chugging away on my Nextcloud server for everything else. This is a killer combo for me, and it saddens me that it might have to change in the future.

But while the Collabora/LibreOffice kerfuffle has been long in the making, I wonder whether the disappointment of seeing Euro-Office choose a fork of OnlyOffice over Collabora, and OOXML over ODF, has added something to the tension between the two camps.

And while I myself am a staunch ODF user and supporter, I wonder what's the relevance of file formats, open or proprietary, in the context of cloud-based collaboration suites? At least, on the user-visible side of things?

[Scotech]

Re: Forking Hell...

I wonder what's the relevance of file formats, open or proprietary, in the context of cloud-based collaboration suites? At least, on the user-visible side of things?

Naff all, except for among crackpots like us lot :)

The only thing that'll ever move the needle on this is if a major government decided to fully adopt ODF, and require all suppliers and contractors to as well. And I just don't see it happening. For all practical purposes, OOXML is just as open a standard - at least in every way an average business or government is likely to care about.

[kamen_n]

Re: Forking Hell...

It looks like the German Government did just that, at least as far as public administration is concerned.

So there is hope.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Forking Hell...

"I wonder what's the relevance of file formats, open or proprietary, in the context of cloud-based collaboration suites? At least, on the user-visible side of things?"

You may be too young to remember but prior to MS having their arm twisted by the US govt. every release of Office resulted in a change of file format. The suffix didn't change, just the file content. Every new release could read old file formats but its new format couldn't be read be old versions. It screwed everyone into a forced upgrade cycle just to be able to read every file they might be sent.

File formats matter and they cost the Office user base dearly.

[kamen_n]

Re: Forking Hell...

Yes, that's certainly been an issue for decades. And it's still an issue today: people actually need a copy of LibreOffice handy if they want to open three- or five-year old Microslop Orifice documents, since often their own suite wouldn't do it.

(Apparently, the OOXML "standard" is a clusterfuck of such galactic proportions that even their own office suite doesn't bother to fully comply with it.)

So, maintaining compatibility with further OOXML "variations" will be the task of the Nextcloud developers. It won't be easy, but it seems like OpenOffice did manage to do a half-decent job of it, so they will be working on a solid base.

* How young am I? Oh, well, I'm only "I remember when it was still called Multi-Tool Word and allowed you to use a mouse and had all its menu items at the bottom of the screen but was otherwise unremarkable, and WordPerfect for DOS was simultaneously King and Queen of word-processing" years young.

[Richard 12]

Re: Forking Hell...

OOXML is impossible to fully implement, as quite large sections are "What Word 97 did".

Which was fine for Microsoft while they still remembered what Word 97 did, but now those people have retired.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Forking Hell...

> You may be too young to remember but prior to MS having their arm twisted by the US govt. every release of Office resulted in a change of file format.

That is not true.

Look, you are right, file formats matter, but no, MS did not keep changing file formats.

I've been supporting and training people on these programs since before the components formed a suite and since before Word ran on Windows. This is not true.

Office 4 for Windows 3 was the first coherent suite for Windows 3.x that I personally saw.

Excel 5, Word 6, Powerpoint oh who bloody cares. Same file formats as Word back to Word for DOS, and Excel since the original Mac version.

Then Office 95.

Excel 6, Word 7. Same file formats.

Then Office 97. New file formats, for the first time since the apps were put together into a suite. I didn't like it. I use Word 97 now, though.

Office 2000... same file formats.

Office XP... same file formats.

Office 2003... last version with menu bars... same file formats.

Office 2007: new file formats, compressed obfuscated XML with binary BLOBs. New file extensions throughout.

Free convertor pack issued so you can open the new files in any Office that uses the previous formats. Although I have not tested it widely in my experience conversion is seamless in Office 2003, mostly works in XP, can be a bit flakey in 2000, and I am not sure it works right at all in 97.

All versions of Office since: same file formats.

There have been _3_ formats ever. 2 changes. 1 of those they changed the extension.

Your claim is not exaggeration: it's not true.

P.S. What US Govt arm-twisting? [[Citation needed]]

[Eric 9001]

Re: Forking Hell...

Every single major release of office has used a different file format - with the same document in different versions of office programs, you end up with differences in formatting and certain things being broken.

The whole business idea is to make sending documents between businesses painful unless each business pays the rent every time for the latest version of office (on wait, it's still common for documents to format differently on different WC's with the exact same version of office, as printer setting change the page formatting and probably a bunch of other things too).

Too bad many can't comprehend such a twisted evil scheme and deny it, despite with their own eyes seeing countless documents broken in office.

The US government rather twists itself into knots to serve microsoft.

[Eric 9001]

OnlyOffice quite clearly is intended to be proprietary software

But it does pretend to be AGPLv3-only, as a program that uses a strong free GNU license gives a reason to use that program over other similar programs that use less strong or weak licenses.

OnlyOffice renders software proprietary by wielding trademarks to prevent both conveying and modifications, as it adds these contradictory further restrictions; "Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License you must retain the original Product logo when distributing the program. Pursuant to Section 7(e) we decline to grant you any rights under trademark law for use of our trademarks.".

Contradictory, retaining the "original product logo" would be considered "use of their trademarks", so you are forbidden from conveying the software with the logo and you are also forbidden from removing the logo - thus you are forbidden from conveying or making available the software for use over a computer network unmodified or modified - thus it is proprietary software.

Selection 7(b) states; "b) Requiring preservation of specified ****reasonable legal notices**** or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it; or" - a logo arguably isn't a legal notice, but if it is, a contradictory legal notice is not reasonable, thus section 7b is not applicable.

Section 7(e) states; "e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or" - but it could be argued that is not a valid usage of section 7e, as the marks are not defined (the AGPLv3 doesn't grant any trademark permissions anyway).

Therefore, the developers of Euro-Office had their hands forced, they had no choice but to utilize the following freedom defense; `All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.` and remove the further restrictions to make it free software.

If the OnlyOffice developers didn't intend for the software to be proprietary, they would have written something similar to; "Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License, when distributing the program unmodified, you must retain the original; `OnlyOffice logo`. Pursuant to Section 7(e), modified versions of the program must use a different logo, as for modified versions, we decline to grant you any permissions under trademark law for use of the following trademark; `the OnlyOffice logo`."

Provided changing the logo is a reasonable task (i.e. swapping out a png), those additional terms would be reasonable;

- If you aren't modifying the program, why change the logo? Requiring that someone include a logo of course gives them trademark permission to do so.

- If you are modifying the program, a minor additional change doesn't stop you from exercising the 4 freedoms.

[doublelayer]

Re: OnlyOffice quite clearly is intended to be proprietary software

I think the most likely result is a decision that 7B's "author attributions" doesn't extend to logos, but there's a chance this leads to yet another Neo4J-style lawsuit about what "further restrictions" are. I can imagine the next three years of judges having to argue about whether a logo counts as an attribution or not. Unfortunately, the more terms a license tries to add, the more opportunities for vagueness and contradiction they introduce since it's not obvious what kinds of attributions can be mandated and, if someone decides it does count, it would be difficult to define something done specifically approved by one term of the license as a further restriction not included in that license.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Resembles St Trinians All-In Mud Wrestling

Decorum, girls !

"decorum, decori, decoro,…"

"Good god girl, show some willing and get your kit off and into the mud with the school !"

"Yes, Miss."

"In this life you ought to be very careful as to what you decline."

Nonsense, yes but so is this FOSS foolery.

[STOP_FORTH]

Modest proposal

This article could be immensely improved with a diagram showing the relationships between the various office suites with a timeline along the bottom.

ASCII art would be acceptable.

It was good enough for early RFCs and is easier than fighting with a user-hostile drawing package.

[kamen_n]

Re: Modest proposal

I'm sure you're aware of the (* catches breath *) StarOffice - OpenOffice.org - Sun StarOffice - Go-OpenOffice - NeoOffice - IBM WorkPlace - IBM Lotus Symphony - Oracle OpenOffice - Apache OpenOffice - LibreOffice - Collabora Office timeline, right? :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#/media/File:StarOffice_major_derivatives.svg

That would just need to have the OnlyOffice versions added in.

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Modest proposal

No I wasn't!

It's comprehensive, but probably has too much detail.

I'd drop most of the point release details, maybe just keep the ones immediately preceding or succeeding forks.

I'd probably turn it through ninety degrees and have the timeline running down the side.

Earliest date at the top, obviously. Top posting is for inferior e-mail systems.

I wonder how long it would take me to convert all of the schematics on Wikipedia to ASCII art?

Or all of the pictures to woodcuts?

Hmm, change all ye spellinge to olde tyme and call it "Ye Projecte GutenWiki".

Sounds like a job for AI.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Modest proposal

> a diagram showing the relationships

*What* relationships?

These are all different products from different organisations with different codebases.

LibreOffice has been renamed a lot, and the other commenter notes that.

StarOffice -> OpenOffice -> LibreOffice.

Collabora Office (CODE/COOL) is LibreOffice in a web browser.

OnlyOffice looks to be the Russian R7-OFIS internationalised.

WPS Office used to be Kingsoft Office: Chinese, proprietary.

There is no family tree. There's just a cluster of reeds: unbranching.

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Modest proposal

OK, I'll settle for a Venn diagram.

Start with a big ellipse labelled Word Processing software that uses ASCII or Unicode.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spreadsheets????

Once upon a time (back in the days of Lotus 1-2-3) I used to review spreadsheets

to determine if the structure was reasonably comprehensible. (You know....the old

fashioned concept of "review and test").

Later, with Excel (when Microsoft injected Basic (VBA) into Excel), I discovered that it

was IMPOSSIBLE to determine what Excel might or might not be doing.

I've often wondered whether MEGABYTE sized Excel spreadsheets using VBA could

have produced PLAUSIBLE BUT INCORRECT results which brought down huge

corporations!

[doublelayer]

Re: Spreadsheets????

"I've often wondered whether MEGABYTE sized Excel spreadsheets using VBA could

have produced PLAUSIBLE BUT INCORRECT results which brought down huge

corporations!"

Of course they could, as could bad database contents or mistaken programs. Usually, a huge corporation has so much inertia from their size and markets that damage caused by such things can't kill them very quickly, and in the intervening time, either someone finds the problem and fixes it or the reason for that bad program ceases to exist and the problem goes away. I think we can say with some certainty that computer problems have caused several large failures, some of which exacerbated a weak company and took it closer to the edge.

But also, how would someone prevent that? You can have more review to try to catch it and better tools to make it less likely, but in the end, it comes down to someone making an important mistake in an organization with tons of people doing lots of things where mistakes are possible. There's a pressure system between the desire for more redundancy to detect and prevent mistakes and the desire for efficiency of not doing everything multiple times and checking and cross-checking everything, which will undoubtedly continue bouncing back and forth for the remainder of human organization.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Spreadsheets????

In most cases the reports are solely for pleasing the suits and therefore the corporation couldn't be brought down by that - as if nothing is actually done in response to the report, it doesn't matter if the results are completely incorrect - just that the report is plausible.

One of the prerequisites for a corporation to become huge is for nothing actually critical to the business to use Excel or other microsoft software.

[Xalran]

Don't worry

We Frogs will find a way to design yet another office suite that we will call Bureau.

[Anonymous Coward]

Paddington???

Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0e53x475qjo

Paddington now has to call the sandwiches in his hat "citrus marmalade sandwiches"!

What next?

Need to say that I'm sharing "UK digitally sovereign documents created by LibreOfiice".............................

.................rather than "ODT"!!!!!

Sigh!

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Paddington???

Just another Brexit dividend!

[FifeM]

Re: Paddington???

A rather strange anti-EU story from the BBC. Even their story eventually admits that names like 'orange marmalade', 'lemon marmalade' etc are permitted. When did anyone buy anything simply labelled 'marmalade' without knowing what was in it? Even the mixed fruit varieties have labels showing what was used.

It's really just allowing for various European languages which have words similar to 'marmalade' covering a range of fruit and sugar products.

As for the 'onion marmalade' offered by some overpriced restaurants .....

But Microsoft thrives on squabbles between competing systems, which come to a sticky end.

[PhilipN]

Greetings, Fleshling

Stolen that one already [upward thumb here]

[Downeaster]

LibreOffice, Collabora, and Softmaker Office

I am sorry to see the fight between LibreOffice and Collabora. Collobora gives the the majority of the code to update LibreOffice. I am surprised Softmaker Office, a German Office suite has been considered by Germany and other European countries as it is in the EU. I use both LibreOffice and Softmaker Office. I don't like the ribbon but both programs offer a choice between the traditional pull down menu interface and the ribbon.

[Liam Proven]

Re: LibreOffice, Collabora, and Softmaker Office

> I am surprised Softmaker Office, a German Office suite has been considered by Germany and other European countries as it is in the EU.

Softmaker is, I'm told, pretty good. They offered me a review copy. The thing is, reviewing an entire office suite is a big job, one I've not done since the 1990s.

But the big thing about Softmaker is that it's not FOSS. It's paid-for proprietary software.

[MuckerDog]

I set up Next Cloud on my nas with onlyoffice to edit spreadsheets remotely when I discovered Apple had analytics turned on specifically for that app ignoring the global setting. All worked OK on the local network, then when I went to edit remotely it errored out telling me I can't edit on a mobile device. This was functionality they had deliberately removed, so good riddance to them.

[mikeymikec]

"It's going to look unfamiliar!"

What, like running an office suite in a web browser is going to look familiar to MSO native?

[Havin_it]

Re: "It's going to look unfamiliar!"

My mob have just levelled "up" from MSO 2007/2010 to MSCPsomethingorother365 and in the process I've found it to much more resemble a web app now; complete with ruddy My Account lozenge at top-right and constant pesky extraneous popups and interstitials occurring where and when one desires them least.

[Sproggit]

Meanwhile, CollaboraOffice for Mobile...

... absolutely sucks.

I suppose there might be a myriad of reasons why the folks behind Collabora Office seem to be trying to take a new direction with the core code on desktop platforms.

But I am the only one who would much prefer that they simply focus their energy on making Collabora Office for mobile a [much] better product? Using the native "QFile Pro" application for iOS and Android, I can access all the files held on my QNAP NAS hosts... and using Collabora Office I can sort-of view them...

But the interface is clunky, it's not possible to make edits [access is read-only] and even basic things like rendering a spreadsheet on screen are so slow and broken that it makes scrolling almost unworkable.

It feels like one of those "first remove the plank of wood from your eye before you try to remove the speck from mine" kind of moments. I don't begrudge Collabora the freedom to explore the desktop platform if that is what they want to do. But I'd much prefer that they did it *after* sorting out their mobile solution - and without taking pot-shots at the team that made it possible for them to pick up and use the code in the first place...

[Alan Bourke]

The problem with OSS

... illustrated. How many corporates will look at this and think "yeah at least I know where I stand with 365 ..."