An open letter to office suite users, just before the Euro-Office announcement - TDF Community Blog
blog.documentfoundation.org
Dear office suite users, In recent days you will have read various articles announcing the arrival of Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe. We feel compelled — reluctantly, since open source should rest on transparency, not deception — to correct this claim. The first open-source office suite developed in Europe was OpenOffice.org in 2001, based on StarOffice’s source code, followed by LibreOffice from 2010. These are two genuine open-source office suites, built from source code that originated in Europe. They are not a freeware clone of MS Office whose code provenance is undisclosed, nor a product that has rebranded itself out of pure opportunism to ride today’s wave of Digital Sovereignty. It is worth remembering that many of those who champion Digital Sovereignty today were silent back in 2006, when the open ISO/IEC ODF standard — the pillar of Digital Sovereignty — was announced: not only did they not listen to us during all these years, but in some cases they greeted us with a condescending smile. If we can speak of Digital Sovereignty in Europe today, it is thanks to The Document Foundation and LibreOffice community members at large, who kept

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An open letter from the Document Foundation warns that Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe, isn’t what it seems - and may reinforce Microsoft’s closed source technology instead.

… Microsoft … developed and controls the horrible proprietary OOXML format, designed precisely to prevent Digital Sovereignty by maintaining content lock-in. It is far less understandable on the part of companies that claim to advocate open source, such as those promoting Euro-Office.

Euro-Office defaults to the fully proprietary OOXML document format, developed and controlled solely by Microsoft. This makes it a de facto ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy, with control remaining firmly in Redmond and far from Europe.

So, despite what is being written in support of Euro-Office — the latest of the office suites developed in Europe, and not the first — the announcement is not against Microsoft. On the contrary, it strengthens Microsoft’s strategy against European Digital Sovereignty, or, if you prefer, against the freedom of European users to control and manage their own content.

    • falseprophet@fedia.io
      19·
      28 days ago

      Because not ever organization and company that has to work with documents produced with Euro-office uses an open source office suite and Microsoft support for ODF is terrible. Which will result company to push for Europe to return to Microsoft.

      We must first make sure everyone switches to software that is capable of reading ODF files before switching to that format.

      • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        28 days ago

        This reminds me of how Microsoft killed Java applets in the browser by “supporting” them in Internet explorer.

      • humanamerican@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        28 days ago

        I suppose that makes sense. Either way though workers will have to be trained to understand the difference between the two formats and when it’s appropriate to use each. Seems like ODF will be more likely to get adopted if it’s the default, with a reminder built in to use OOXML if sharing with someone outside the organization (obviously in more user-friendly language).

    • sunbeam60@feddit.ukEnglish
      2·
      24 days ago

      Tell me you’ve not migrated an org of 25000 50-year old public servants without telling you’ve not migrated an org of 25000 50-year old public servants.

      • humanamerican@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        24 days ago

        No one has done that because no single person can do that by themselves.

        I’ve participated in technical migrations of large organizations full of non-technical, unmotivated users. It sucks regardless.

        And we can’t just keep lowering our expectations re: people interacting with technology. Desktop computers, office suites, and file formats are concepts that came into the non-techie consciousness 20 years ago now. The people who refuse to use an extra 5 brain cells to try to understand this stuff should not be the baseline we cater to.