Mastodawn

Heavy drama in the open-source world of...

...Office Document Software.

Nextcloud, originally a fork of ownCloud, has launched Euro-Office, a fork of OnlyOffice (pissing off OnlyOffice). Collabora is weighing in and issuing comments against both OnlyOffice and Euro-Office while, itself, forking Collabora Office Desktop from the Document Foundation's LibreOffice. Document Foundation has now resumed LibreOffice Online which competes against Euro-Office and OnlyOffice.

(I think I've got all that right 😅 Correct me if I haven't! 😂)

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 I unironically love this!!!! ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

Document software may appear boring on its face, but Microsoft Office is a big reason why folks still stay with Microsoft OS and don't (can't...) move to Linux. MS Office 365 is often used as a bridge to allow folks to move to Linux while still using Microsoft products in the browser but that solution still keeps them tied to closed source solutions.

Development of Free and Open Sourced Software (FOSS) office products, both desktop apps and online web apps, is a core and key element to allowing FOSS solutions to thrive - both for individuals and organizations.

This level of drama and fighting is indicative of a lot of effort and attention being thrown into this arena. I'm confident over time it'll settle and different projects will merge back together or at the very least borrow and build upon each's efforts.

Read and get your fill of the drama here: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/02/eurooffice_forks_onlyoffice/

#FOSS #digitalSovereignty #installParty #Linux #diDay

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

: Meanwhile, Collabora splits from LibreOffice Online amid claims TDF ejected 'all Collabora staff and partners'

The Register

@tinker a true drama, I just wonder the motivation behind the fork while having an option to contribute.

@ibs3d @tinker
> I just wonder the motivation behind the fork
€7bn in first year of a march for "EU digital sovergeinty".

EU countries are on the edge* to pass 5-10% of what EU businesses annually pay to the US corpos and shovel those money at open-source businesses. The smell of bucks made this fork fountain going now.

*still gossips. It of course still can be a call to the US companies who might be willing to ensure eucrooks and their families wellbeing.

@ohir @tinker Yeah that's true, but also a nice amount to sponsor ongoing development of LibreOffice I believe. Each fork create their own fanboys/flamewars unfortunately.

@tinker They all are running up to be the preference platform for sovereign offfice application.
Just a subtle note: someone is using OOXML (which has origin in no open or documented standard), others at least have roots in ODF (which is open, documented, and ISO standard).
Who will get more credit, and how, is a matter of weight in the same American lobbyists. Prove me wrong and I'll be happier.

Ray McCarthy 6h ago

@luc0x61 @tinker
ODF is far preferable to OOXML fud.

@raymaccarthy @tinker That wanted to be my message, between the lines

Bill, organizer of stuff 7h ago

@tinker And Proton now, too! Theirs may be proprietary - I haven't been able to track down what it may have been forked from, at any rate.

Søren Ladegaard 5h ago

@wcbdata @tinker But Proton's offering is too simple. My 1997 Amiga wordprocessor has more features 🙂

mirabilos 7h ago

@tinker for these of us who hadn’t followed it:

where does OnlyOffice come from?
what does Collabora do, and what’s their (now ex?) relationship to TDF?
TDF are those who forked LibreOffice off OpenOffice? (which itself is StarOffice IIRC?)
what is this "Online" version? where comes it from? any relationship other than the name to the version without it?

My point of knowledge is basically, there’s Lotus Smartsuite and Softmaker Office, and OOo is now LO in distros, and I had to suffer through Winword 97 during apprenticeship.

Stefan Schmidt 6h ago

@mirabilos @tinker Smartsuite… hmm how does that relate to 1-2-3?

mirabilos 6h ago

@tinker @zaphodb 1-2-3 was the table calculation program included in it, though I mostly used WordPro (back then for CV and invoices)

Stefan Schmidt 6h ago

@mirabilos @tinker “"1-2-3" symbolizes the software's three modules: spreadsheet, business graphics and database (replacing the originally planned word processor).” Ah thats what i had in mind then. Never used it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

Lotus 1-2-3 - Wikipedia

Games That I Missed 6h ago

@mirabilos Oh, I had not thought about Lotus Smartsuite and WordPro in a long, long time. I wrote all of my university papers in WordPro. Moving to Microsoft Word when I got an office job was disappointing.

I think I still have the install CD in a binder somewhere ...

Enema Cowboy 4h ago

@GamesMissed @mirabilos

I remember using Aston-Tate Multimate.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
Oh, they even had their own "PowerPoint" — Lotus Freelance Graphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Freelance_Graphics
I remember running into this software as a young kid, I had no idea what presentations are and I was like: "What is this?! Is it an image editor like PaintBrush? Even if it is, it's a very weird one!" 🤪
Only years later it all started making sense to me.

IBM Lotus Freelance Graphics - Wikipedia

mirabilos 5h ago

@m0xEE @tinker @zaphodb I have no idea, someone threw the CDs-with-booklet at Karneval instead of candy, and someone I knew picked up two and gave me one, so I used it for a bit, a few years after it was actually released; before that, MS Works 1.05 for DOS was as close to an “office suite” as I ever got…

@tinker lol please make a weekly #opensource drama update like this.

Tinker ☀️7h ago

@Gina - Hahaha! I'll be the Andy Cohen of FOSS 😂

On this week's "Real Housespouses of FOSS" we find the dev teams of XFCE and LXQt battling it out over whose Linux desktop environment is really the lightest! Gnome developers weigh in on the need for features while KDE laughs in the corner maintaining that you can have both!

Will the FOSS families care? Will the closed sourced neighbors be convinced to even try?

https://fosstodon.org/@Gina/116340456717762694

Gina (@[email protected])

@[email protected] lol please make a weekly #opensource drama update like this.

Fosstodon

LUCASTUCIOUS 7h ago

@Gina @tinker yes please

Bernard Tyers 5h ago

@Gina @tinker Seconded!

The last paragraph of the article is worth thinking about - if there’s potential big government money available to support/endorse a sovereign EU office package, you can bet organizations are going to be falling all over themselves to try and get their share of the market.

Tinker ☀️7h ago

@rickf @Gina 💯

@rickf @tinker correct. There are basically 3 alternatives to MS Office in the #opensource market atm:

1. Nextcloud based: think OpenDesk, Euro-Office, the Good Cloud, office.eu, IONOS and many others. Choice of Collabora or OnlyOffice. Some with Nextcloud Talk, others like Opendesk with OpenTalk.
2. LaSuite based: the French gov suite, via Mosa.cloud, lasuite.coop, Linagora and Openburo.eu as a collective. Self built, very lean apps.
3. Alternative offering: like Proton with their own suite.

tautology 6h ago

@Gina @rickf @tinker I'm intruiged why you went to Proton instead of LibreOffice for alternative offering?

Or did you just mean in-web-browser office alternatives?

@tautology @rickf @tinker i meant anything that offers a browser based office suite, aka files + text editor + videocalling or chat solution, email as bonus.

I'm sure there are many more than the ones I mentioned.

@tautology @rickf @tinker I will say, it's getting super annoying to be approached weekly by companies that sell "THE sovereign office suite, fully EU, for only €€€ per year, etc" and it's literally just Nextcloud and Collabora.

@Gina @tautology @tinker

Indeed. As I said, and at the risk of being overly-cynical, it's all about the money. But deAmericanizing one's tech stack is a sound plan, regardless. #resiliency #autonomy #privacy

@rickf @tautology @tinker true, and don't get me wrong, we love Nextcloud <3. What I'm less impressed by is businesses selling NC as their own amazing invention.

@Gina @tautology @tinker

No kidding. They just hope there aren't any competent geeks present who can peel the curtain back when they come in to hawk their wares to managers and contracting officers.

Early in my career I remember being in a product pitch meeting - my directors were excited and ready to sign until I asked the vendor why we should buy their expensive products when we could use 2 free 'hacker' tools that did the same thing. (They blathered ...but we didn't buy it)

Tara L. Campbell 7h ago

@tinker 🤣 Your synopsis of the drama is fantastic! Please do keep us updated on developments in the Office Document Software space. 🍿

Aside: I'm rooting for LibreOffice, but man do they need to do something about the download and installation process for Mac. I cannot fathom why they think a torrent is the best option, especially when the Windows process is a typical UX.

Edited: grammar

Tinker ☀️7h ago

@tarabara - See this is great - I'll get you and @RachelThornSub together to battle out the gossip of whether we should support LibreOffice or not!

The drama. The DRAMA!!!

https://famichiki.jp/@RachelThornSub/116340508242819291

Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ (@[email protected])

I seriously hope this leads to major improvements in all these packages. And frankly I'm rooting against LibreOffice, because abusive behavior towards noobs by moderators is tolerated on their official forum, so I'm assuming their whole team is the worst kind of fosshole.* *fosshole: a F.O.S.S. asshole

Famichiki

Tara L. Campbell 7h ago

@tinker @RachelThornSub FistyCuffs! 🥊

(Except I didn't know about what Rachel described so I'm in agreement there, no room for that garbage.)

Tinker ☀️6h ago

@tarabara @RachelThornSub 💯 (I use and support LibreOffice a lot and would hope it would be easier to clamp down on that sort of mentality - which is not unique to LibreOffice but is absolutely their responsibility to address within their own projects)

Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️6h ago

@tinker @tarabara The post that sent me into a rage is this one:
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/autofill-function-for-furigana-when-typing-in-japanese/48874
A "leader" on the forums couldn't be bothered to Read the Fucking Question, yet felt free to insult the OP and offer a useless "solution." When the OP very politely pointed out that gabix was not offering a solution to the question that was actually asked, gabix just ignored it on no doubt moved on to terrorize some other noob.

Autofill function for furigana, when typing in Japanese

I’ve been having trouble with LibreOffice because I can’t figure out how to have it autofill the kana when I insert Furigana over kanji (i.e. the phonetic supertext, when typing in Japanese). This autofill for furigana is a standard feature in MS Word, so it is expected by instructors, etc., that I would have that ability at home. Manually filling in the furigana is extremely time-consuming. Please let me know how can I enable the autofill. Thank you!

Ask LibreOffice

Tinker ☀️5h ago

@RachelThornSub @tarabara - Yeah, thats trash. They need to reign that in.

Tara L. Campbell 5h ago

@RachelThornSub @tinker I see what you mean. While it is 6yo, if LibreOffice wants to be taken seriously, they must clean up all their content, forums included, and stop acting like petulant, superior techbros.

Side quest... Here I go! 🤓

Martin Schlüter 🌻3h ago

@tarabara
Answer to aside: on #MacOS you can install LibreOffice from the app store which makes the installation much easier plus you get all updates automatically.

Tara L. Campbell 1h ago

@maddin That's good to know! I didn't see a link to the app store on the main download page so I figured it wasn't an option. Thank you!

Drew 🇵🇭 ♾️7h ago

@tinker
That's forking fantastic news!

(someone had to say it)

Tinker ☀️7h ago

@drewtowler 😂

Daniel Durrans 6h ago

@tinker forking hell

🇵🇸 Álvaro González 6h ago

@tinker I just hope OpenOffice.org doesn't join the call. 😂

sudo βραχυκύκλωμα

@tinker nice comment

Tor Lillqvist 6h ago

@tinker You say that the Document Foundation has "resumed LibreOffice Online", can you find a single commit done to it since they "resumed", though?

Tinker ☀️6h ago

@tml - Not yet. Going solely off of this: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/24/libreoffice-online-a-fresh-start/ ( "resuming" also includes planning and organizational work - not just coding. But we'll see I guess).

LibreOffice Online: a fresh start - TDF Community Blog

LibreOffice is a desktop application, but we get many requests for a web-based version of the suite that users can deploy on their own infrastructure. Several years ago, project members started to develop LibreOffice Online, but in 2022 the Board of Directors at The Document Foundation voted to freeze the project and put it in the “attic”, for reasons that have now been superseded. Earlier this month, the current Board of Directors decided to revoke those votes to give new life to the project, as Eliane Domingos, chairperson, put it: To start the process of freeing LibreOffice Online, and to start the journey that will lead to having an online version by the community and for the community. Now the work begins. We plan to reopen the repository for LibreOffice Online at The Document Foundation for contributions, but provide warnings about the state of the repository until TDF’s team agrees that it’s safe and usable – while at the same time encourage the community to join in with code, technologies and other contributions that can be used to move forward. We will actively work with the community to identify how to foster LibreOffice Online, including its technological basis, QA and

TDF Community Blog

Bjoern Michaelsen 1h ago

@tinker
That is just saying "we want your donations" (for something we just actively alienated all past contributors and expertise, but dont tell anyone).
@tml

grahamperrin 46m ago

Discussion of the blog post:

Only a handful of comments in Hacker News above, one of them usefully links to an earlier discussion of The New Collabora Office for Desktop.

Krypt3ia 6h ago

RadicalEcologist 6h ago

@tinker
I have been using LibreOffice since they forked from OpenOffice and had no idea OnlyOffice was actually being used by anyone, no offense meant. I've never been impressed with Collabora and Nextcloud in general always had an off vibe and always looks like they are trying to do way too much at once. In short, I'm betting on LibreOffice with the online implementation to come out on top, but I look forward to the diversity of development that could come out of this. Then again, in real work environments where microshits online suite is already paid for or google docs are allowed, everyone I engage with still just emails documents or shares them on a cloud drive after making local edits, so maybe this is a fight over a solution still looking for a problem.

Mostly correct, but saying the Document Foundation "resumed" LibreOffice Online as kind of a "competitor" is a bit over the top.

Their announcement was much more defensive, along the lines of: "ok, since many of you really want something like that, you can continue working on it – we'll reopen the repository".

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/24/libreoffice-online-a-fresh-start/

LibreOffice Online: a fresh start - TDF Community Blog

LibreOffice is a desktop application, but we get many requests for a web-based version of the suite that users can deploy on their own infrastructure. Several years ago, project members started to develop LibreOffice Online, but in 2022 the Board of Directors at The Document Foundation voted to freeze the project and put it in the “attic”, for reasons that have now been superseded. Earlier this month, the current Board of Directors decided to revoke those votes to give new life to the project, as Eliane Domingos, chairperson, put it: To start the process of freeing LibreOffice Online, and to start the journey that will lead to having an online version by the community and for the community. Now the work begins. We plan to reopen the repository for LibreOffice Online at The Document Foundation for contributions, but provide warnings about the state of the repository until TDF’s team agrees that it’s safe and usable – while at the same time encourage the community to join in with code, technologies and other contributions that can be used to move forward. We will actively work with the community to identify how to foster LibreOffice Online, including its technological basis, QA and

TDF Community Blog

Tinker ☀️6h ago

@tuxwise - drama requires a bit over the top.

But yeah, you're absolutely correct. We'll see if it pans out.

pudding_verified

@tinker wait until you hear about the drama with Libbie

John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧡✊🏻✊🏿5h ago

@tinker forking frenzy is a great headline 😁🤩

Tinker ☀️5h ago

@FaithfullJohn - I love the Register for their headlines alone 😂

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 5h ago

@tinker I've recently (a few weeks) started using LibreOffice. It seems OK so far ... in contrast to previous years when family members have tried its predecessors and found them useless at things like interoperability.

Grace Bennett 5h ago

@tinker Heavy drama… and somewhere an AI is quietly rewriting the whole doc in 2 seconds 🤖😂

Søren Ladegaard 5h ago

@tinker While I wait I will continue using Softmaker Office NX 🙂

Simon Michalke 5h ago

The devs from onlyoffice went down a dark path a while ago by trying to stop people from self Hosting without paying for support. I also gave up on onlyoffice due to the infamous document deletion bug when syncing back to NC.

However the useability of onlyoffice vs collabora was always better. If NC pulls this off and fix thw bugs, then we finally have a proper FOSS alternative.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien 5h ago

@simon_m @tinker I am self hosting collabora office and that works well.