European outfits Ionos and Nextcloud have launched Euro-Workplace, a fork of the OnlyOffice cloud-based productiveness suite aimed toward orgs with qualms round sovereignty, upsetting an offended response from the unique developer.
A number of days in the past, a “coalition of European enterprises and neighborhood organizations,” fronted by German self-hosted cloud vendor Nextcloud, together launched Euro-Office, a “true sovereign workplace suite” and “substitute for Microsoft Workplace with intuitive interface and powerful compatibility.”
To this point, Euro-Workplace is so new that slightly than a homepage, its backers are as a substitute sending folks to the project page on GitHub – though a number of Wikipedians already had time to write down a Wikipedia article about it.
Euro-Workplace isn’t model new code that appeared from nowhere. Slightly, it’s a fork of the present OnlyOffice suite, which we have checked out a few instances, reminiscent of when OnlyOffice 7.2 appeared in 2022, and the next 12 months, when we compared OnlyOffice 7.3 with the Chinese freeware suite WPS Office.
The Euro-Workplace GitHub readme particularly mentions the mission had issues cooperating with OnlyOffice, saying that the code is GNU Affero Basic Public License (AGPL), and claiming that OnlyOffice is a tough firm to collaborate with.
Press releases are usually written in euphemistic marketing-speak. There may be some hope that LLM-based machine translation will deal with this quickly – there’s already a splendid LinkedIn translator in case you want a chuckle – however this feeble fleshling on FOSS desk will use his head meat to translate it.
‘Intuitive interface’
Translation: It has a ribbon.
Purpose: It seems to be just like Microsoft Workplace. Your customers are most likely technophobes. This would possibly not freak them out.
Context: It is a jab at LibreOffice, which defaults to a extra conventional menu-and-toolbar UI, though it offers a choice of ribbons as nicely.
‘Sturdy compatibility’
Translation 1: It defaults to Microsoft file codecs.
Purpose: You may maintain all of your information.
Context: One other jab at LibreOffice, which defaults to its personal codecs – for what its overseers at The Doc Basis consider strong reasons.
Translation 2: It runs in an internet browser.
Purpose: You need not set up something, and the identical instruments work the identical on Home windows, macOS, and Linux purchasers.
Context: It would not seem like a local app on something, however it’s close enough for government work.
‘True sovereign’
Translation: That is an EU effort.
Purpose: It isn’t American, however extra instantly, it isn’t Russian.
Context: The OnlyOffice HQ is in Latvia, however there are numerous indicators that it was developed in Russia. In the meantime, Ionos and Nextcloud have stated that OnlyOffice’s Russian roots are usually not a safety danger for Euro-Workplace, with Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek stating: “We will vouch for our model.”
Rivals like Collabora have made a degree of highlighting OnlyOffice’s obvious Russian roots, nonetheless, and final 12 months revealed a comparative chart of Collabora On-line and OnlyOffice highlighting its personal UK base beneath the heading Origin and Ownership.
In Russia, a similar-looking workplace suite is actively offered beneath the title Р7-Офис/R7-OFIS – in different phrases, “R7-Workplace.” JSC R7, the corporate that develops and sells R7-Workplace in Russia, is based in Nizhny Novgorod.
Because the Euro-Workplace announcement, Collabora has revealed one other evaluation, this time questioning whether or not Euro-Workplace is a really European Office Suite, noting the intensive Russian-language code feedback within the codebase Euro-Workplace inherited from OnlyOffice.
Latvia, incidentially, has the most important Russian minority within the EU, a hefty chunk of whom converse Russian.
OnlyOffice’s reactions
OnlyOffice is extraordinarily sad in regards to the fork. It has revealed an evaluation claiming NextCloud and Ionos are guilty of license violations with the Euro-Office project.
OnlyOffice is made accessible beneath model 3 of AGPL, which is designed to guard Free Software program rights for SaaS functions, the place the software program may by no means go away its creator’s servers and the customers solely entry it over the community. It obliges the seller to offer these customers with the supply code if they need, however it does make the availability for the service supplier to guard its logos and emblems. Particularly, in part 7, headed Further Phrases, the AGPL3 says:
It notes that this will cowl emblems and so forth:
… And…
OnlyOffice added a permission, which says:
The Euro-Workplace growth staff eliminated this in commit #e452ace, titled Remove unenforceable and non-obligatory Section 7 additions from copyright headers, with the remark:
The Register requested authorized boffin Neil Brown of decoded.legal to weigh in, and he commented:
In contrast to the majority of web commenters, Brown is a real solicitor and doesn’t merely play one on the web. Nevertheless, we’re amused to notice that the commentators of Hacker News and certainly those of Lobsters appear to agree.
OnlyOffice has issued a flurry of bulletins for the reason that information. On Monday, it revealed an interview with CEO Lev Bannov (who lives in Istanbul and is, we perceive, a Turkish citizen) on the Euro-Workplace scenario.
He says:
Yesterday, OnlyOffice introduced that its partnership with Nextcloud has been suspended.
So what was Nextcloud considering anyway? We requested if the motivation was a want to maneuver away from Collabora code, or to maneuver away from a product with Russian roots. Jos Poortvliet, VP Communications & Product Technique, gave us the next assertion:
He concluded:
Saying that, this one, if you’ll forgive us a cliché, might run and run.
Some related historical past
It’s attention-grabbing to notice that, a decade in the past, Nextcloud received began as a hostile fork of ownCloud, run by authentic ownCloud co-founder Frank Karlitschek and lots of the authentic builders.
This origin story is similar to that of LibreOffice, the place the builders of OpenOffice filed for divorce from Oracle, which had acquired the suite when it bought Sun.
Early final month, we lined the launch of the new Office.EU hosted suite. This hosted providing can be based mostly on Nextcloud, and we spent a while going into the historical past of Nextcloud and its integration with workplace suites.
To recap, Nextcloud launched version 18.0.0 in January 2020, utilizing OnlyOffice as its default built-in on-line workplace suite. This was adopted by the discharge of Nextcloud version 19.0.0 in June 2020, which switched the default workplace suite to Collabora Workplace as a substitute.
Now Collabora forks off
In the meantime, there are indicators of rising disharmony between The Doc Basis, dwelling of LibreOffice, and Collabora. In November 2025, Collabora released Collabora Office Desktop, which competes instantly with the domestically installable LibreOffice. In March, the Doc Basis responded, saying that development of LibreOffice Online would resume.
Yesterday, Collabora revealed a put up claiming that The Doc Basis has ejected “all Collabora staff and partners.” We now have no motive to imagine that this obvious rift between The Doc Basis and Collabora was a motivation for the choice to fork OnlyOffice as a substitute, however it’s not a reassuring growth.
The Doc Basis can be sad about this growth. It has blogged about this, publishing an Open Letter to European Citizens. It’s a lot much less direct than Collabora, however it talks in regards to the significance of contemplating geopolitics and of selecting between rival efforts.
We additionally spoke with The Doc Basis’s Paolo Vecchi, who cited Heise’s coverage of the launch, by which Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek stated:
Vecchi’s retort?
Vecchi additionally famous that there have been a number of current FOSS choices on this house already, together with openDesk from ZenDiS, which is used by the International Criminal Court, and the French LaSuite [naturellement, en Français], which both use Matrix.
The second Trump presidency has prompted vastly renewed interest in European digital sovereignty. There may be the scent of presidency cash wafting round, and like blood within the water, it is inciting a feeding frenzy within the eternally underfunded world of open supply. ®
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