I laud the attempt and I think it's important there are more projects that try to compete with their American counterparts. I do want to gently note that if your entire pitch is "we are a bold, independent European alternative that liberates you from the hegemony of the established American players," maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."
The product they're replacing is called Microsoft Copilot 365 :)
More seriously, Office is a great word for what the software package does, and it can't be trademarked. You can have Microsoft Office, Libre Office, and Europa Office.
To be fair, one interpretation is spending innovation tokens wisely. Just piggy back off an already understood concept/brand, don't try to be too clever on the parts where innovating won't matter that much.
There's a bit of an issue with the overload of 'office' in the political context, this being an EU initiative and domain but other than that I say good call.
Office is just like using Xerox for copiers, Tempo for paper handkerchiefs, Excel for spredsheets, hoover for vacum cleaners,.... some names stick on the common mind.
Office is a software category. Just because one competitor names things as "the car"(TM) doesn't mean you can't call your vehicle a car. Also it is (was) actually called Microsoft Office for a reason, because it is the Office software from Microsoft.
What is Office EU?
Office EU is a European productivity suite for files, email, calendars, documents and calls, built on Nextcloud Hub. It brings Files, Talk, Groupware and Office together in one platform.
Looking through the Office EU screenshots, they do look like Nextcloud Groupware/Files/Office with the logo changed.
Mostly adding this because I wasn't sure if it was a new product or not based on a first glance over the Office EU site. Nextcloud offers recommendations for providers on their site, most of which are in the EU [0]. The Office EU website seems to be new since around January of this year [1]. More managed hosts for Nextcloud is a good thing in my book, but I'd be a bit wary to host my stuff with a brand new provider.
> Office EU is a complete cloud-based office suite
Issue is.. if you are a traditional MS Office "poweruser", the last thing you want to do is spend your days in a web browser. These apps should also be available as native apps, similar to MS Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, etc.
I would rather say that lack of VBA support is an issue, and that it's an insurmountable task for alternative Offices to solve. Yes, and absurd one too.
As a "poweruser", I'd rather prefer to have all software available in the browser, open source, and hackable, than a native-based COM-ridden turd that only became more bloated and slow over the last couple of decades. (Yeah, and don't forget Ribbon UI!)
Unfortunately, Office EU is about politics, and not about hackable open-source software available with a single click.
Microsoft draws over 3 billion dollars out of Norway yearly. We are many that want this number much, much closer to zero. At it's small steps like this that makes it possible.
It's hard to get numbers on what countries pay to Microsoft. The Dutch parliament has repeatedly asked and has not gotten numbers even though there is a whole agency since 2014 (https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/overzicht-van-alle-onderwerp...) specifically for giving Microsoft preferential treatment in procurement.
This has been a longtime coming, it is not unique but it is still significant
The enormous momentum of the installed base and occupied headspace of Microsoft systems made them lazy and complacent decades ago. They have been peddling insecure unreliable software for a generation now, and believed their was no viable threat.
It took too long, but finally. Trump and his mad bad actions are good for the Europeans like a heart attack is good for your health
Good luck to them, but without an equivalent to Microsoft Access it's not really a replacement for Microsoft Office for many power users. (Yes, I'm aware that Access has some weaknesses as a database but for quick-and-dirty custom applications it's still the easiest platform out there.)
You can have hosted Nextcloud on Hetzner, with Headscale, email server, Vaultwarden, and Wordpress on European infrastructure (Hetzner) individually installed just for you from Federated Computer today for $19/month unlimited user accounts. I use it every day. Human support, too...!
Sure you can, you can also pirate Microsoft Office (the versions prior to the shittening). But companies don't want that, they just want to pay a few bucks per user per month to make it someone else's problem. Microsoft offers this service. Google offers this service. FOSS does not.
That's also why always-connected SaaS is winning - it makes more things the vendor's problem instead of the customer's problem. Provided that you maintain a good relationship with your vendor. A metal machining company doesn't want to hire an employee to manage a bespoke computer system, or even to replace computer parts or install Ethernet cabling in the building. They might do it, if it's the only good option, but they prefer it to just work without effort, even for more money.
As an American, I remember when none of this was an issue a mere 18 months ago, and it’s crazy to think we did this to ourselves. This is all so unnecessary… and dumb, very dumb.
Some European countries were trying to reduce their dependency on proprietary American software for decades now, with varying success. The recent events have likely accelerated this trajectory, but it is not new.
>1.1 Introductie
>Op 28 maart 2024 heeft de gemeenteraad van Amsterdam unaniem ingestemd met het
(gewijzigde) initiatiefvoorstel Amsterdam Digitaal Onafhankelijk van raadslid IJmker
English:
>On March 28, 2024, the Amsterdam City Council unanimously approved the
(amended) initiative proposal Amsterdam Digital Independent by Council Member IJmker
I can't find any info about the people behind it. The branding, mentioning "The Hague" and the rest of the landing page seems to try really hard to fool me into believing this is official from the European Union, I wouldn't trust them with anything, just get Libreoffice.
Am I being dumb: they say it's "open-source software" but I can't actually find a link (or links) to the software / source anywhere on the office.eu website??
wtf!? I enter my email address for an invitation, receive a link to an est. 2 pages form for answering a shit load of unrelated question, like org name, org country, last summer vacation, first time I got pimples... Is this a request to become the next pope?
That's a cloudflare anycast address; your traffic won't be routed through Texas unless you're in or near Texas. Cookiebot would appear to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usercentrics
It's always a good thing to have multiple players and I hope we can have actual EU-based alternatives, but I feel like this project, simply being a rebranded NextCloud as far as I can tell, is less interesting than La Suite numérique [1] developed by the French government or CryptPad [2] developed by XWiki, a French company based in Paris.
Well that's a pompous headline from the author's PR dept. "Europe" as in, "The European Union", or just some marketing trick based on making you believe it is to give it more weight?
I'm european and can still easily confuse the "European Union" and "Europe the general area" when context is lacking, it's not a big stretch of the imagination for me that people _anywhere_ could construe this as "official" as well.
All that it looks like is backed by some emanation from the city of The Hague. No mention of the EU proper. It's european owned and backed, sure, but not EU owned and backed.
> Office EU will offer simple plans for individuals and teams. Pricing will be competitive and designed to be easy to understand. We will publish full plan details closer to launch.
> Will there be a free plan?
> A free plan is planned after launch. It will be a good way to try Office EU before committing. Exact limits and features will be shared when it is ready.
70 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 63.9 ms ] threade.g.:
- https://hostingdiscussion.com/news/european-cloud-workspace-...
- https://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/empresas/amp/plataforma-offi...
And it seems to be repackaged Collabora (~LibreOffice):
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/05/office_eu_suite/
More seriously, Office is a great word for what the software package does, and it can't be trademarked. You can have Microsoft Office, Libre Office, and Europa Office.
There's a bit of an issue with the overload of 'office' in the political context, this being an EU initiative and domain but other than that I say good call.
Mostly adding this because I wasn't sure if it was a new product or not based on a first glance over the Office EU site. Nextcloud offers recommendations for providers on their site, most of which are in the EU [0]. The Office EU website seems to be new since around January of this year [1]. More managed hosts for Nextcloud is a good thing in my book, but I'd be a bit wary to host my stuff with a brand new provider.
[0]: https://nextcloud.com/providers/
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260116234614/https://office.eu...
Issue is.. if you are a traditional MS Office "poweruser", the last thing you want to do is spend your days in a web browser. These apps should also be available as native apps, similar to MS Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, etc.
As a "poweruser", I'd rather prefer to have all software available in the browser, open source, and hackable, than a native-based COM-ridden turd that only became more bloated and slow over the last couple of decades. (Yeah, and don't forget Ribbon UI!)
Unfortunately, Office EU is about politics, and not about hackable open-source software available with a single click.
It's hard to get numbers on what countries pay to Microsoft. The Dutch parliament has repeatedly asked and has not gotten numbers even though there is a whole agency since 2014 (https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/overzicht-van-alle-onderwerp...) specifically for giving Microsoft preferential treatment in procurement.
The enormous momentum of the installed base and occupied headspace of Microsoft systems made them lazy and complacent decades ago. They have been peddling insecure unreliable software for a generation now, and believed their was no viable threat.
It took too long, but finally. Trump and his mad bad actions are good for the Europeans like a heart attack is good for your health
That's also why always-connected SaaS is winning - it makes more things the vendor's problem instead of the customer's problem. Provided that you maintain a good relationship with your vendor. A metal machining company doesn't want to hire an employee to manage a bespoke computer system, or even to replace computer parts or install Ethernet cabling in the building. They might do it, if it's the only good option, but they prefer it to just work without effort, even for more money.
From: https://amsterdam.raadsinformatie.nl/document/16563456/1/Mee... (which is not the Hague, but Amsterdam)
>1.1 Introductie >Op 28 maart 2024 heeft de gemeenteraad van Amsterdam unaniem ingestemd met het (gewijzigde) initiatiefvoorstel Amsterdam Digitaal Onafhankelijk van raadslid IJmker
English:
>On March 28, 2024, the Amsterdam City Council unanimously approved the (amended) initiative proposal Amsterdam Digital Independent by Council Member IJmker
Be careful.
It even works perfectly with Consent-O-Matic extension.
[1] https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/
[2] https://cryptpad.org/
I'm european and can still easily confuse the "European Union" and "Europe the general area" when context is lacking, it's not a big stretch of the imagination for me that people _anywhere_ could construe this as "official" as well.
All that it looks like is backed by some emanation from the city of The Hague. No mention of the EU proper. It's european owned and backed, sure, but not EU owned and backed.
Tsh, marketing. (see Bill Hicks on marketing).
> What are the pricing plans?
> Office EU will offer simple plans for individuals and teams. Pricing will be competitive and designed to be easy to understand. We will publish full plan details closer to launch.
> Will there be a free plan?
> A free plan is planned after launch. It will be a good way to try Office EU before committing. Exact limits and features will be shared when it is ready.
[1] https://office.eu/faq