LibreOffice brands Euro-Office a 'de facto ally' of Microsoft's lock-in strategy

The Document Foundation has taken a swing at Euro-Office, accusing the self-described sovereign productivity suite of doing Microsoft's content lock-in strategy a favor while wrapping itself in the language of European digital independence.

The attack came from Italo Vignoli, a founding member of The Document Foundation, who published an open letter on Monday, just hours before after Euro-Office 1.0 debuted as what its backers describe as a "truly open" and sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office.

"In recent days you will have read various articles announcing the arrival of Euro-Office, which is being 'marketed' as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe," he wrote. "We feel compelled — reluctantly, since open source should rest on transparency, not deception — to correct this claim.”

According to Vignoli, that title belongs to OpenOffice.org, released in 2001 from Sun Microsystems' StarOffice codebase, followed by LibreOffice in 2010. His argument is that Euro-Office is the latest entrant in a market Europe helped create, not the pioneer its marketing suggests.

The dispute is the latest chapter in a sovereignty spat that has been brewing since April, when German cloud outfit Nextcloud and hosting giant Ionos unveiled Euro-Office, a fork of the OnlyOffice productivity suite pitched at organizations seeking European-controlled alternatives to US software vendors. The launch immediately drew criticism from OnlyOffice's original developer, who objected to the fork and its branding.

Now LibreOffice has joined the pile-on.

Vignoli argues that genuine digital sovereignty depends on the use of the Open Document Format (ODF), the ISO-standardized format championed by LibreOffice and other open source office suites. However, Euro-Office defaults to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format, which remains the dominant format across corporate desktops despite years of complaints from open source advocates.

"Euro-Office defaults to the fully proprietary OOXML document format, developed and controlled solely by Microsoft," Vignoli wrote. "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.

The project's backers have presented Euro-Office as a European answer to concerns about dependence on American software providers and cloud platforms, part of a broader push for digital sovereignty that is gathering momentum across the continent. In the Document Foundation's view, there's not much sovereignty in swapping Microsoft Office for a suite that still defaults to Microsoft's document format.

“The announcement … 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,” Vignoli said. 

A spokesperson for Euro-Office's creators told The Register: 

"We agree that proprietary file formats are a serious hinderance to digital sovereignty. We thus need to free users who are stuck using these formats, and enable them to work with an open office platform. This will allow organizations to transition to open document formats like ODF." 

"Euro-Office will focus development efforts on improving ODF support. Ultimately, ODF should be the standard - not OOXM, and we will work towards that." ®