Euro-Office has recently launched its stable 1.0 release on June 9, presenting itself as a “truly open” and sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office. However, this claim has drawn sharp criticism from The Document Foundation (TDF), the organization behind LibreOffice. In an open letter, TDF’s Italo Vignoli questioned Euro-Office’s marketing assertions, emphasizing that it incorrectly positions itself as the pioneer of open-source office suites in Europe, despite OpenOffice.org launching in 2001 and LibreOffice in 2010.
Vignoli expressed concern about Euro-Office’s alignment with the European Union’s push for digital sovereignty, which aims to reduce reliance on American technology companies and their proprietary formats. Euro-Office, being a fork of ONLYOFFICE and supported by companies like NextCloud, Proton, and IONOS, aims to address these issues with a web-based collaborative office suite.
However, Vignoli highlighted a significant contradiction: Euro-Office defaults to the proprietary OOXML document format created by Microsoft, thereby branding it as a “de facto ally” of Microsoft, contrary to its sovereign claims. He further sarcastically noted that LibreOffice is not merely a “freeware clone” of MS Office, nor is it a product that has rebranded to capitalize on current trends of Digital Sovereignty.
Additionally, Vignoli recalled that many who now advocate for Digital Sovereignty were previously indifferent to the introduction of the open ISO/IEC ODF standard in 2006, showing little support for the initiative at that time.
Euro-Office distinguishes itself with its web-based accessibility, intending to function alongside other products, similar to its roots in ONLYOFFICE.
For further details, visit The Document Foundation.