Hi, I am not really facing any technical issue. But I am wondering what the pathway forward for office integration now is?
We now have a situation of Nextcloud Office actually being Collabora, which by themselves have a feud with the Libreoffice foundation (rightfully so, they are actually doing the work so I am siding very mcuh with Collabora here). The integration is working ok and the UI upgrades by Collabora have been great, but it is not as performant as OnlyOffice.
OnlyOffice is what I have used for a while now for that reason, although I have major resevrations due to the russian influence of this project. In my view - when MS Office compatibility and cross platform usage is of importance - it is the better solution right now.
And now we have the super odd-ball situation of Nextcloud spearheading an OnlyOffice fork to de-russify it and make it a European FOSS_Office suite - while Nextcloud Office continues to be Collabora under the hood.
So: Where is this going? (and based on a blog post by Collabora I am not the only one wondering.)
I think both projects have promising pathways for a true online and offline and mobile office platform, both suitable for self-host, cloud and enterprise infrastructure. But I am confused as to what Nextclouds intentions are now? Will we see EuroOffice and Collabora coexist as integrations? When will EuroOffice replace the OnlyOffice integration that now is essentially a hostile component based on the license fallout?
My main issue is that I want to now turn off OnlyOffice on my self-hosted AOI because I expect retaliatory actions due to trust being breached. But Nextcloud Office is truly not in a shape to be as performant as OnlyOffice is right now.
So in the name of self-hosters who are probably wondering the same: What is the recommended - and intended - path of action?
Itâs likely that you will be able to continue using all three with Nextcloud, or at least Collabora Online and EuroOffice. With ONLYOFFICE, I guess it will depend on whether the integration app for Nextcloud continues to be maintained, but that is already developed by Ascensio System SIA, so I guess it is up to them whether they want to continue developing it or not.
As for the fully integrated solutions, namely Collabora built-in CODE Server and the Community Document Server for ONLYOFFICE, we will have to wait and see. If I had to guess, I would say that long term, the ONLYOFFICE server might eventually disappear in favour of EuroOffice.
At the moment, however, EuroOffice is still a tech preview, so we will, again, have to wait and see. As far as I know, a release has been announced for the summer.
There are also still some legal claims pending from ONLYOFFICE. Personally, I consider them unsubstantial, but I am not a lawyer, so we will have to see in that case as well whether that is actually true and whether ONLYOFFICE will pursue them at all.
As for the The Document Foundation / Collabora situation, I do not think that Collabora is somehow existentially threatened by it, and Collabora Online will continue to exist. Whether it continues to be called âNextcloud Officeâ once EuroOffice becomes stable or not is ultimately not important, as long as it continues to exist and be supported by Nextcloud. Honestly, I cannot imagine that changing.
But of course, I cannot predict the future. That is simply my assessment of the situation, based on many years as an active Nextcloud and FOSS user.
in the last years Collabora was the preferred product and IMO it remains in the mid-term. Especially the launch of Collabora desktop client which is supposed to add collaborative editing in the desktop application soon will close the biggest gap in Nexcloud documents workflow. and last but not least - CODE/COOL improved in last years and became much snappier - if you didnât test recently check it out.
My recommendation remains to keep using CODE.
That would have been my question. I quickly switched my AOI to Collabora this morning and the web editors are fine. What I cannot find though in the desktop apps is the possibility like in OnlyOffice to directly edit cloud documents even if there is no local sync copy of the whole nextcloud files. So for that usage it seems one would be stuck using the browser for now.
What confuses me though: If Nextcloud Office backed by Collabora made those big strides and is really working increasingly well: Why now fork OnlyOffice? Collabora is already mainly driven out of EU and the UK and seems in a good stable state. Wouldnât it have been better to build on that?
Yes I read that already and am aware. Imho the document foundation deserves everything that is happening now. If non-contributors start running the show and treat the people and companies that do all the work like that, itâs no surprise Collabora will move on.
The foundation has been blocking some substantially needed upgrades and renovations Libreoffice desperately needs.
With the adoption of ODF as the mandatory standard format for documents within Germanyâs government digital infrastructure, Collabora is likely to experience another boost.
The decision to adopt ODF is primarily about achieving independence from U.S. corporations and their products. An alternative developed predominantly in Russia would undermine the goal of European independence
yes. but Collabora is essentially the core of ODF support (because of the LibreOffice base), and OnlyOffice iis actually behind there and better at Microsoft formats.
Hency my confusion why Nextclud would fork EuroOffice off OnlyOffice.
Itâs not just Nextloud, itâs an initiative of over a dozen organisations including IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian, BTactic and others.
Also, the fact that it works very well with Microsoft Office formats is explicitly one of the reasons for the fork. The look and feel is also more similar to Microsoft Office. Both are crucial, in my opinion, if you want to convince as many organisations as possible to actually migrate to such a solution.
Yes, but compatibility with Microsoft Office formats will remain crucial for many years to come. Also, governments and politics may change, but companies stay, and most of them still use Microsoft Office. And even if they were to switch to a European solution they are not going to want to convert decades worth of documents.
Letâs not drift too far into idealism here. The goal is to have an alternative to Microsoft Office that is developed in the EU. It therefore makes sense to use a product that is known for handling Microsoft Office formats well and that also has a similar look and feel.
I think both products Collabora, and EuroOffice have their place, and itâs good to have options.
Yes. Itâs probably a wash whether to start off of Collabora or OnlyOffice.
That being said: I would still like to hear what the Nextcloud roadmap looks like.
Is EuroOffice going to become the âFirst Citizenâ or will we see an equal choice between the 2 systems?
I am not even particulary opinionated about whatâs better.
I do not think anyone can tell you that definitively at this point, probably not even Nextcloud itself
As I said, EuroOffice is still a preview, and the first release is not expected until summer. There is still quite a bit of work to be done on the fork and, as far as I know, certain proprietary parts of ONLYOFFICE still need to be reimplemented.
Also, EuroOffice is not a âNextcloud projectâ either; it is its own project. Nextcloud is simply involved in the initiative. Yes, they are listed second after IONOS. However, I do not know how much Nextcloud is actually involved in the development process.
Long story short: I do not think anything regarding the integration of Collabora Online will change in the near or medium term, and I definitely donât think itâs going away. EuroOffice will simply become another option once it is stable. What things will look like in two, three, or five years â who knows?
By the way, ONLYOFFICE also had a collaboration with Nextcloud and was even briefly something like the primary office suite in Nextcloud before they developed the âNextcloud Officeâ branding together with Collabora Online.
So I would not worry too much about this whole âfirst citizen / second citizenâ or âNextcloud Officeâ branding discussion, and would simply use whatever works best for you
Yeah probably. I primarily got concerned because even Collabora seemed suprised by the move.
We certaiinly do not need another feud in the FOSS world right now, things are tense enough already.
I hope Collabora adds the direct cloud ediitiing in the desktop editors soon, this would bring it on par with OnlyOffice, which I happily get rid of.
Iâm not too worried about that. Providers of platforms like Nextcloud need office solutions, and providers of office solutions need platforms that they can integrate with, and ultimately, both Nextcloud and Collabora are companies that need to make money. So, as long as there are paying customers who want to use Collabora Online with Nextcloud or Nextcloud with Collabora Online, theyâll probably find a way to make that happen.
Iâm enough of a capitalist to believe that haha.
But I also could not have imagined the emerging stupidity of the LibreOffice foundation board, essentially firing their most valuable contributors. But I think thatâs just what you get sometimes.
Donât get me wrong. I didnât mean to say that Nextcloud or Collabora are only in it for the money. But money is needed to keep the lights on at a company and pay the developers. And thatâs why, in my opinion, it would be foolish for Collabora and Nextcloud to go their separate ways, or even actively sabotage each other. That would ultimately harm both projects, and thatâs why I donât think it will happen.
Yes. I do not have any issue with them making money, quite the contrary actually.
The best FOSS projects are usually backed by sustainable funding.
Devs need to live and good devs are not cheap.
That is why I am more angry towards the LibreOffice Foundation. They are not recognizing who iis actually putting in the work.
i usually mout the webdav as a network drive to my computers and use that to edit documents directly on the cloud. This has served me quite well so far.
I donât even use rich text editors anymore if I can help it, and for the two or three actual documents I still need to edit per year, or the occasional simple spreadsheet, LibreOffice on the desktop or Collabora Online in the browser works equally well. I donât know, I probably use less than 5% of the features of those office suites.
But then again, this whole initiative wasnât primarily started for us home users/homelabbers/self-hosters, but for potential paying customers such as government organizations or companies.
