First Euro-Office Release Set for June 9

Nextcloud announced today that the initial release of the controversial Euro-Office suite is set for June 9. Euro-Office is a free and open source alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs aimed at businesses, public authorities, and other organizations in the EU.

“The Euro-Office project is the result of a collaboration between European companies and organizations, including IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian, BTactic, OpenXchange and Office.eu,” the announcement explains. “Many of these partners are providing development resources for Euro-Office and are continuing to expand these, creating jobs and driving innovation in Europe. In April, IONOS and Nextcloud started hiring a dedicated development team for Euro Office, [and the] first positions have been filled.”

The controversial bit here is that Euro-Office is based largely on the source code for OnlyOffice, and that organization says that its use is in violation of its GNU AGPL licensing terms. OnlyOffice severed its partnered with Nextcloud because of this, but after a series of back and forths, the creators of the GNU AGPL license came out on the side of Nextcloud and Euro-Office, allowing the distribution of this new suite.

Nextcloud now says it has “liberated” the OnlyOffice codebase. It has cleaned up the code, added security updates, and worked to integrate Euro-Office with other open office productivity solutions, including its own. The immediate goal is to release a stable and secure web-based version of Euro-Office as quickly as possible. But the next step will be to work on the desktop and mobile apps and integration features. The next release will also support ODF and other open file standards.

You can learn more about Euro-Office on its GitHub website.