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.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out MS is behind Euro-Office.
I really dislike those opportunistic bootlicker like euro office and euro os.
I’m not familiar with EuroOS. What is it?
I meant EU OS. A “proof of concept” Linux distribution but instead on relying on already existing European based Linux Distributions (arch, opensuse, cachyos) it’s using fedora which is backed by Red Hat.
But hey it looks fancy with the European flag replaced the stars of the founding nations with windows cursors.
Euro-Office could always pull a reverse-enshittification by offering full compatibility for the OOXML format and defaulting to it initially, then once the software has a loyal userbase, publish tools making it simple to convert existing documents to open formats as well as arguing for doing so. It would be a fight with Microsoft but they have to start somewhere realistic, and the world still uses Microsoft.
Wouldn’t that tool be called “Save As…”? If the suite supports both formats, converting a document is as simple as opening and saving it.
And they could absolutely just default to OpenDocument and also support OOXML, just like LibreOffice does.
An initial screen with a select default option.
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You really believe in the good of man eh?
Microsoft - The Genocide Computing Company!
Not a great decision, but a practical one. As long as it has great support for both, the default can be changed later once it has traction.
But why not have it default ODF?
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.
This reminds me of how Microsoft killed Java applets in the browser by “supporting” them in Internet explorer.
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).
Boom.
Genuine question, if somebody could help me out, I’d appreciate it. How does using OOXML restrict what a user can do with their own content? Or have have I missed the point here?
OOXML is Microsoft’s proprietary format. These explain the issue very well.
It’s a standard that Microsoft controls. They can use it in an embrace, extend, extinguish strategy in the future, and Euro-Office is doing the embrace part for them.
Compatibility is important. So is defaulting to an open standard. That default safe option is critical.
