Before we delve into the subject, you should know that the Euro-Office is a new European productivity project from Nextcloud and IONOS, which was spun off from ONLYOFFICE.
It is a self-hosted, web-based office suite built for organizations and governments that want collaborative document editing on their own infrastructure. Much of this is due to the move away from the ONLYOFFICE suite with ties to Russia, which has raised concerns.
Then, The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit organization behind LibreOffice, had submitted a question, asking which document format this suite would use as its native format.
They have not received any response and have published a thank you post to the ODF contributors, while also criticizing the silence of the Euro-Office.
TDF is not happy
Towards the end of March, TDF published an open letter to European citizens, arguing that digital sovereignty is not as simple as switching office software suppliers. Real sovereignty, TDF said, requires open document formats, open fonts and expertise. None of these things come automatically with a simple switch of suppliers.
Subsequently mentioned the issue of OOXML versus ODF. OOXML, the format used by Microsoft Office, is designed and controlled entirely by Microsoft. Any office suite that has OOXML compatibility by default is still structurally dependent on decisions made in the US, regardless of where it is hosted.
TDF wants Euro-Office to commit to the ODF standard, the Open Document Format. It is an ISO standard, developed openly without any company controlling it.
The TDF also reported that the press release for the launch of Euro-Office made no reference to ODF as a native format and thus publicly asked whether it would be the default for documents created and shared between European public bodies.
What does this mean;
Euro-Office's GitHub lists ODF alongside DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX, so it's not like they've completely ruled out open formats. But in their FAQ they frame the whole thing around "excellent compatibility with MS," which is a problem.
Supporting a format and making it the native default are two different things. The distinction is important for any European institution that really wants to break the Microsoft dependency rather than simply moving it to a different server rack.
The Euro-Office should address this problem immediately, as the TDF question is now there. And since Germany has already made the use of ODF mandatory by law, it is not a question that will disappear soon.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
