
The announcement of the Euro-Office is welcome news. The coalition is credible, the governance is sound and the timing is perfect. Europe needs office software, and The Document Foundation is delighted to see such significant players allocating resources to make it happen. However, we have a question. It is not meant to be hostile, but it is the only question that matters. What is the native document format of Euro-Office? The press release promises full compatibility with Microsoft formats. We are well aware of the logic behind migration: organisations moving away from Microsoft need to be certain that their documents will survive the transition. But “full compatibility with Microsoft formats” is certainly not a definition of sovereignty, but rather the definition of a different kind of dependency. OOXML is a format designed, controlled and managed solely by Microsoft. Building a European office suite prioritising compatibility with OOXML means ensuring that the European document infrastructure remains subordinate to architectural decisions made in Redmond. The hosting moves to Europe, but the lock-in remains in Redmond. The alternative exists, is mature and is a law in several European jurisdictions. ODF, the Open Document Format, is an ISO standard developed through an open and
The door to digital sovereignty is open, please come in For decades, a community of developers, activists, researchers and public officials has quietly worked on the idea that free and open-source software based on open standards is not only the best technical choice, but also the only one compatible with democratic governance. We have created the necessary tools, overseen migrations and provided user training. We have also drafted policy documents and presented them to committees. We have documented the consequences of public documents being readable only by software developed in a single country, managed by a single company and subject to the laws of a different jurisdiction, as well as the commercial decisions of a board of directors. The French gendarmerie, the Austrian Ministry of Defence and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein – to name but a few examples – have taken action, alongside regions, provinces and cities across Europe. We have always been here, and not with a product to sell, but with the knowledge, patience and sincere conviction that public institutions belong to the public, and that this also applies to their digital infrastructure. Sometimes we were listened to, but far more often we were merely tolerated, at