- A group of European giants are planning to launch a rival to the independent Office
- Companies and the public can all contribute to an open source project
- It’s a fork of ONLYOFFICE – Europe had concerns about that project
“A combination of European businesses and civil society organizations” has announced a new open source office software system ready to take on US hyperscaler rivals such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, focusing on the three main areas of documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
European giants such as IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian and BTactic are behind this initiative.
The news comes amid ongoing tensions between the European Union and US Big Tech, which brings an independent option to support European innovation and reduce reliance on international technology companies.
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Europe plans to launch its own open source office
The consortium plans a stable release as soon as summer 2026, with a preview of the technology already available for testing.
With the so-called Euro-Office, the suite is designed to have a common interface but falls under the jurisdiction of Europe, not the jurisdiction of the US. However, rather than aiming to target consumers, Euro-Office is marketed as a secure, independent solution for the public sector, education and other businesses.
“With the geo-political developments we have seen in the last year, there is a clear need for a reliable solution, fully compatible with Microsoft and easy to use in Europe,” wrote IONOS CEO Achim Weiß.
This announcement was shared by NextCloud, whose CEO said that Europe already has the building blocks for such a tool. It simply lacks “the step to assemble them into a logical, comprehensive solution.”
“We welcome contributions from anyone, including individuals, companies, civil society organizations and non-profit organizations,” the open-source project’s GitHub page reads.
As for its foundations, it is not a new project. Instead, it builds on ONLYOFFICE’s existing code but marks a fork and remote control of that code for five different reasons: blocked pull requests, controversial product decisions, lack of transparency, non-open source mobile apps and concerns about Russian ownership.
With the technical preview now open and the consortium collecting bug reports, testing common file format support and fixing/adding features, the next few months will be about refining the products before version 1.0 is expected to land in the summer.
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