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"De facto ally of Microsoft" - LibreOffice Weighs In on Euro-Office and EU Digital Sovereignty (blog.documentfoundation.org)

submitted 1 month ago by randomname@scribe.disroot.org to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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An open letter from the Document Foundation warns that Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe, isn't what it seems - and may reinforce Microsoft’s closed source technology instead.

... Microsoft ... developed and controls the horrible proprietary OOXML format, designed precisely to prevent Digital Sovereignty by maintaining content lock-in. It is far less understandable on the part of companies that claim to advocate open source, such as those promoting Euro-Office.

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

So, despite what is being written in support of Euro-Office — the latest of the office suites developed in Europe, and not the first — the announcement is not against Microsoft. On the contrary, it 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.

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[-] tirateimas@lemmy.pt 20 points 1 month ago

Not a great decision, but a practical one. As long as it has great support for both, the default can be changed later once it has traction.

[-] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 45 points 1 month ago

But why not have it default ODF?

[-] falseprophet@fedia.io 19 points 1 month ago

Because not ever organization and company that has to work with documents produced with Euro-office uses an open source office suite and Microsoft support for ODF is terrible. Which will result company to push for Europe to return to Microsoft.

We must first make sure everyone switches to software that is capable of reading ODF files before switching to that format.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago

This reminds me of how Microsoft killed Java applets in the browser by “supporting” them in Internet explorer.

[-] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

I suppose that makes sense. Either way though workers will have to be trained to understand the difference between the two formats and when it's appropriate to use each. Seems like ODF will be more likely to get adopted if it's the default, with a reminder built in to use OOXML if sharing with someone outside the organization (obviously in more user-friendly language).

[-] sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 points 1 month ago

Tell me you’ve not migrated an org of 25000 50-year old public servants without telling you’ve not migrated an org of 25000 50-year old public servants.

[-] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

No one has done that because no single person can do that by themselves.

I've participated in technical migrations of large organizations full of non-technical, unmotivated users. It sucks regardless.

And we can't just keep lowering our expectations re: people interacting with technology. Desktop computers, office suites, and file formats are concepts that came into the non-techie consciousness 20 years ago now. The people who refuse to use an extra 5 brain cells to try to understand this stuff should not be the baseline we cater to.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026

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