Nextcloud and IONOS have initiated Euro-Office, a European fork of the open-source office suite ONLYOFFICE, targeting organizations and governments. The project seeks a 'Made in Europe' collaborative document editing solution amid concerns over ONLYOFFICE's Russian origins. ONLYOFFICE has accused the fork of breaching the GNU Affero General Public License v3.
Nextcloud, known for its open-source collaboration platform, and IONOS, a server infrastructure provider, announced Euro-Office as an online office suite for web-based collaborative document editing. Unlike desktop-focused tools like LibreOffice, it is designed for deployment within organizations, including integration with platforms such as Nextcloud for handling Microsoft formats like DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX. The fork addresses geopolitical issues, as ONLYOFFICE originated in Russia with development largely by Russian developers, though the company relocated operations to Latvia. Euro-Office developers cite ONLYOFFICE's lack of transparency and discouragement of code contributions, as stated in the project's GitHub repository. They aim to offer the software with a clear European label to meet data sovereignty needs for governments and strict organizations. ONLYOFFICE, which focuses on enterprise collaborative products with strong Microsoft file compatibility, expressed unhappiness over the fork. The company claims Euro-Office violates the AGPLv3 license under which ONLYOFFICE is released. This development could reduce reliance on ONLYOFFICE integrations in platforms like Nextcloud, potentially affecting its business in Europe.
