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

submitted 1 day 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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[-] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 24 points 22 hours ago

Wouldn't that tool be called "Save As..."? If the suite supports both formats, converting a document is as simple as opening and saving it.

And they could absolutely just default to OpenDocument and also support OOXML, just like LibreOffice does.

[-] bufalo1973@piefed.social 5 points 15 hours ago

An initial screen with a select default option.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026

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