[HN Gopher] Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office plat...
___________________________________________________________________
Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform
Author : campuscodi
Score : 238 points
Date : 2026-03-15 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (office.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (office.eu)
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Cheap purchased PR slop with fake articles and no product.
|
| e.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/
| gzread wrote:
| I need to learn this skill of producing nothing and pretending
| I have. It seems to be very rewarding, financially speaking.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| You need to know the right people in Brussels/Washington, to
| milk and scam the taxpayer in your favor.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Really, just lack shame and sell something you do not have
| and bet that you can get it before anyone really presses too
| hard. It's an incredible thing to see.
| canyp wrote:
| Should have gotten an MBA instead of a BS.
| phatskat wrote:
| But I thought getting an MBA _was_ BS!
| nradov wrote:
| In general getting EU grants is very lucrative. It takes some
| relationships and writing skill but in the end you never have
| to deliver any results (beyond maybe a report that no one
| ever reads)
| kzrdude wrote:
| They list a bunch of companies under the heading "All these
| companies work with the same technology" on their landing page.
| I think it's quite scummy, and very non-impressive when you see
| it.
| storus wrote:
| LibreOffice came from OpenOffice which was StarOffice which was
| developed in Germany.
| dabedee wrote:
| 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."
| graypegg wrote:
| It also possibly sets a false expectation of perfect
| compatibility... you can imagine bureaucrats trying to figure
| out if a file needs to be opened in Office or Office (new)
| Avicebron wrote:
| Considering that for the average office worker I know
| switching from outlook to outlook (new) is a major hurdle
| within the same ecosystem, I can only imagine what they were
| thinking coming up with a name.
| enceladus06 wrote:
| That is not even broaching the sacred domain-specific excel
| macros which will 100% break when you try and run in this
| program.
| Topfi wrote:
| That is a very fair point, there are quite a few
| businesses and government agencies where I live, which
| are very deeply entrenched in very complex, decade
| spanning VBA based workflows that need absolute and fully
| compatibility before a switch away from "MS 365 Copilot"
| could even be considered and the name may give false
| expectations.
|
| Now, I really, very much dislike it that often
| discussions on sites like this one can be utterly
| derailed by someone bringing up an utterly unrelated
| overhyped topic, so feel free to dismiss this, but I
| could honestly see LLMs providing a potential path to
| smoothing out such issues. Some model have gotten rather
| robust when it comes to making targeted changes to pre-
| existing Excel files dating back to before I was using a
| computer, including handling very specific modifications
| to ancient macros across multiple sheets. Perhaps, this
| could be leveraged to some extent, though being honest
| and trying not to overhype, I suspect that similar to
| those planning to use agentic coding to rewrite decades
| old, tested, crucially important COBOL code in a more
| modern language, there are likely many edge cases that
| will be hard to properly cover and if such a solution
| isn't both absolutely reliable and seamless to the users,
| large scale adoption by such entities will likely be
| impossible in the short term.
| linhns wrote:
| Outlook New somehow to this day, lacks good feature of
| Outlook
| reactordev wrote:
| I mean, at least the gloves come off, who's going to come after
| them for using the name? Microsoft? EU will just invalidate
| their patents. Done. Bye.
| pavlov wrote:
| To be fair, Microsoft Office doesn't exist anymore as a
| separate brand:
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-offi...
|
| _" Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite
| with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services,
| and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app,
| and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft
| 365 Copilot app--with a new icon, new look, and even more
| features."_
|
| You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message
| in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known
| productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it
| "365 Copilot"?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I doubt this will stop the lawsuit. Also Microsoft still
| absolutely sells Office 365 tiers separately from Microsoft
| 365 tiers. Their marketing is terrible and confusing but
| Offie definitely still exits as a brand, and you can bet your
| bottom dollar the lawyers are going to be having a great day
| on Monday.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I doubt this will stop the lawsuit.
|
| I mean, I think that ship has probably sailed. Borland
| Office showed up at about the same time as Microsoft
| Office, in the late 80s. Then StarOffice, Corel Office,
| Wordperfect Office, throughout the 90s... If Microsoft had
| a defensible trademark there, then this would hardly be the
| first target. And Microsoft barely uses the "Office" brand
| _itself_, these days, and hasn't for years.
|
| (There is still a product called Microsoft Office, but the
| thing that most users would think of as MS Office is now,
| bafflingly, branded "Microsoft 365 Copilot".)
| cedilla wrote:
| Microsoft does not have a trademark for "Office", which is
| clearly a type of product and can't be used as a program
| name (just like you can't name your oatmeal "Oatmeal" and
| expect trademark protection).
|
| Microsoft does have a figurative trademark for "Office"
| with the rectangular icon: https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/
| #details/trademarks/01141355... - office.eu's logo does not
| bear any resemblance.
|
| The only way this would be infringing is if office.eu usage
| could be confused with Microsoft other's trademarks - like
| Microsoft Office - but I don't see that.
|
| So no, office.eu will have a calm Monday on that front,
| just like hundreds of other companies offering products
| with "Office" in their name.
|
| (I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer before deciding to take
| on a trillion dollar company).
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I can't wait to launch my Office alternative in Cameroon,
| office.cm. I do suspect using such a generic TLD swap of
| Office's well-known domain for a knockoff is particularly
| perilous compared to others mentioned. Bear in mind the
| possibility for consumer confusion is a top criteria.
| blell wrote:
| >just like hundreds of other companies offering products
| with "Office" in their name
|
| There may be hundreds of other companies selling products
| with the noun "office" in their names, but there only is
| one producing a productivity suite called simply
| "Office". I would expect launching another productivity
| suite called "Office" would be trademark infringement.
| Just like I can't release a car called "Beetle" or
| "Golf".
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > productivity suite called simply "Office"
|
| Microsoft Office.
|
| I doubt Microsoft can own a name as generic as Simply
| "office".
|
| Office.eu does not hold any resemblance to Microsoft
| Office in terms of logo, typography, makes no reference
| to MS, etc.
|
| Of course they can sue. The most competent employees at
| MS are likely their lawyers and lobbyists anyway.
| cedilla wrote:
| Microsoft never called their productivity suite "simply"
| office, nor have they registered a product under that
| name.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| > Also Microsoft still absolutely sells Office 365 tiers
| separately from Microsoft 365 tiers.
|
| Case in point:
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoft-365/enterprise/off...
|
| And yes. Microsoft branding and marketing is absolutely
| horrendous.
| glenstein wrote:
| For me, the charitable interpretation is that office is very
| close to a default term for the category of the software. Open
| Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, Only Office, Polaris Office.
|
| One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's
| independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a
| term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.
|
| I don't entirely disagree though because they could have
| attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's
| what the .eu is.
| graypegg wrote:
| I think they could've worked a little harder to at least find
| a noun you could futz with so it has some commonality between
| european languages. "Office" is probably well known, but it
| doesn't "feel" very european to use a noun that's different
| from most other EU languages translation. Could be
| "Productiv" or something. It feels like the federal
| government here in Canada has a team of language nerds ready
| to smash together a clever french-english name with two
| superimposed meanings when needed. ("O-Train", Ottawa Train,
| Au Train. "Via Rail". "Service Canada". "ArriveCAN". etc)
|
| You can't tell me there isn't a few turbo-nerds somewhere in
| the entire continent of europe that will find the
| intersection of 6-7 languages to name an EU groupware suite.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Ireland is in EU. English is the primary language there
| (even though it is not the original language).
|
| Also, English does work as a sort of Lingua Franca across
| EU countries.
|
| Nothing wrong with it.
| type0 wrote:
| Correctamente:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English
| navane wrote:
| Euffice.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Yeah, someone could confuse it with WordPerfect Office, Ability
| Office, Libre Office, WPS Office, or some other obscure
| software that uses the word "Office" in it's name.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > maybe don't name your product the exact same thing as the
| product you're replacing? "Office." They named it "Office."
|
| Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?
|
| (I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)
|
| Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites
| have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30
| years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google
| Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't
| necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly,
| until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still
| called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).
| SllX wrote:
| Well iWork too. Before that, AppleWorks/ClarisWorks, but
| yeah, there's things like
| OpenOffice.org/StarOffice/LibreOffice/NeoOffice which are
| pretty much all the same lineage (StarOffice and its
| derivatives). Zoho's is Zoho Office Suite, which at least
| adds an extra word.
| rsynnott wrote:
| "Work/Works" tended to be used for specifically integrated
| office suites (AppleWorks/ClarisWorks, and then Microsoft
| Works). Though iWork is _not_ one, granted.
|
| I think integrated office suites have now entirely died
| out.
| SllX wrote:
| Isn't LibreOffice still an integrated office suite like
| OpenOffice.org was? I never bothered installing it, so
| I'm genuinely asking about that one.
|
| But Google Workspace would probably count as a fully
| integrated suite.
| Maken wrote:
| LibreOffice is like Office a collection of
| intercompatible apps. Microsoft Works was a single
| application offering Word/Excel/Outlook-like
| functionality.
| rsynnott wrote:
| And, oddly, a terminal emulator.
| Topfi wrote:
| In fairness, Office is as generic a term as one can come up
| with for such a software suite. On top of that, I wouldn't be
| surprised if that fell under Genericide like Lego or Google
| and, lest we forget, the Microsoft Office brand does not exist
| anymore, it is 365 and Copilot now...
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| That word is not as loaded as you might think it is anymore. At
| least not with the next generation of users.
|
| With your average 18-24 year old swimming in Google Docs,
| Notion, Monday, Airtable and a dozen others..."Office" will
| belong to the EU in no time.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| What I get out of that pitch is "use us because we're local to
| you, and possibly because you're required to, not because we're
| and good, or that we'll even try".
|
| I mostly interact with smaller contributors to their field, and
| they tend to be unique and bold, because that's what is needed
| to be competitive. When they get their uniqueness and boldness
| out of just being who they are, it doesn't tend to foster the
| type of uniqueness and boldness needed to make a good product.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In the current climate, using MS Office is a business risk
| for European companies. Who knows what idea will pop into ol'
| minihands' head next time he has a bad day at the golf
| course? Like, it would _not_ be particularly shocking if at
| some point in the next 2.5 years he attempts to interfere
| with the ability of US companies to sell services to Europe.
| You can no longer depend on "but that would be an obviously
| terrible idea, so they won't do it" as an operating
| principle; see the tariffs.
|
| Frankly, right now, there is a lot of money to be made in
| just providing safer alternatives to American cloud stuff.
| They don't need to be _better_, they just need to be based in
| a stable jurisdiction.
| ewoodrich wrote:
| Focusing on the word "Office" feels like a bit of red herring
| considering it's frequently used in other Microsoft Office
| replacements like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
|
| Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the
| historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an
| additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the
| word "Office."
|
| But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in
| branding so maybe that's enough?
| gzread wrote:
| 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.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I thought of it branded not Office generically but "Office.eu"
| but maybe I am wrong ?
| davnicwil wrote:
| 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.
| hengheng wrote:
| The Hackernews snark would likely be worse had they called it
| 'bureau'.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Office is like the Xerox of photocopiers these days. It's no
| longer an enforceable trademark.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| The EU tech ecosystem is sadder every day
| gizajob wrote:
| Launching now!
|
| Join waitinglist. For a web app of Google docs.
| throw310822 wrote:
| The problem is that every attempt at European alternatives is
| taken at the government level (of some member country or of the
| EU) and immediately announced with great fanfare as the
| European comeback. The pathetic thing about it is that
| everybody who isn't totally clueless sees how utterly
| inadequate these attempts are, given the political involvement,
| the microscopic resources invested, the lack of incentives from
| competition, and the general hostility of European legislation
| and bureaucracy. And yet politicians keep making fools of
| themselves announcing this or that EU answer to American tech.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Care to expand further?
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Just click the link.
|
| You don't see how pathetic this rebrand of Nextcloud is?
|
| It is practically a scam.
| GavinAnderegg wrote:
| From the FAQ on the homepage: 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.
|
| [0]: https://nextcloud.com/providers/
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260116234614/https://office.eu...
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| > Yes. Office EU provides a desktop sync client for Windows,
| macOS and Linux so files stay up to date across devices.
|
| Regardless of the Nextcloud issue. It's probably just a web
| wrapper then.
| stavros wrote:
| Hopefully it _is_ whitelabeled Nextcloud, and all the
| improvements can go back to the Nextcloud core. That would be a
| great use of my tax money.
| Kuraj wrote:
| I agree. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Touche
| Confiks wrote:
| You say "tax money", but this project isn't a government
| project or using public money at all. As for contributing
| back to Nextcloud: there is a long list of Nextcloud partners
| [1] that contractually obligated themselves to contribute
| back to Nextcloud for every user they onboard. The company in
| this article has not.
|
| [1] https://nextcloud.com/partners/
| stavros wrote:
| Oh what! Wow, that' misleading, although I guess it doesn't
| explicitly say "public" or "government" everywhere. Hm.
| sgt wrote:
| > 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.
| herbst wrote:
| This is probably not the target audience. Most people just need
| to write occasional letters and sign some files.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| The vast majority of office use at my work is in the browsers
| because the files are stored in Sharepoint. It seems to work
| well enough for basic needs (no macros and fairly simple
| formulas in excel etc.)
|
| I have a non-technical friend in finance who uses the Desktop
| versions of Excel for most of their work and they say it
| crashes nearly every day losing work.
| sgt wrote:
| Excel is pretty stable.. I guess it could be those specific
| sheets doing something odd.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I think it's a factor of things, but Excel isn't as stable
| as it once was. My friends spreadsheets include:
|
| - Row count ~100k - Column count ~1k - The usual vlookup,
| etc. formulae. - Oracle extensions that sync tables to
| databases in the cloud.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Every time SharePoint/Teams decides to open a document in the
| browser, I cry a little. Misalignments in Word, broken basic
| keyboard movements in Excel, terrible performance across the
| board.
| tiderpenger wrote:
| 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.
| gizajob wrote:
| Your sovereign wealth fund probably makes 3 billion dollars out
| of Microsoft yearly.
| kivle wrote:
| The fund owns about 1.26% of Microsoft (data seems to be for
| 2025), which according to Gemini is about $37.5b in today's
| value. Stock value of Microsoft changed about 5.23% over the
| last year, which comes down to about $1.96b, so you're not
| far off...
|
| https://www.nbim.no/no/investeringene/investeringsoversikt/#.
| ..
| gizajob wrote:
| What about including dividends? The price of MSFT also
| dropped like a stone recently.
|
| But anyway if you guys could stop forcing Microsoft on
| everybody that would be great.
| oever wrote:
| Do you have a reference for that number?
|
| 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.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes but Holland has been governed by the VVD Neoliberals for
| more than a decade and they have a super hard-on for
| everything American. I think that will probably change now.
| himata4113 wrote:
| Has it been hugged this easily? Doesn't load for me.
| worik wrote:
| 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
| nradov wrote:
| 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.)
| flumpcakes wrote:
| In 25 years I have never seen anyone use Microsoft Access in
| earnest. For the overwhelming majority of users I do not think
| this is an issue. The last time I used it was when studying for
| CLAiT Plus.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... Wait, people are still using MS Access?! I didn't even
| realise that there was still a current version.
|
| > but for quick-and-dirty custom applications it's still the
| easiest platform out there.
|
| So I'm a big LLM sceptic. Seriously, you can check. But if
| there is one thing that LLMs _are_ quite good at, it is the
| sort of quick and (very) dirty custom CRUD apps traditionally
| produced with Access.
| davidpaulyoung wrote:
| 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...!
| gzread wrote:
| 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.
| aprilnya wrote:
| Umm.. this feels like a better suited comment for another
| part of this thread. Federated Computer appears to offer the
| exact same service as OfficeEU - a SaaS/managed Nextcloud
| dlev_pika wrote:
| 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.
| int_19h wrote:
| 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.
| Muromec wrote:
| It was. The recent 18 months gave it more momentum of course,
| but it didn't just appear out of nowhere.
|
| 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
| worksonmine wrote:
| 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.
|
| Be careful.
| EdNutting wrote:
| 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??
| EdNutting wrote:
| Oh, there's some reference to NextCloud - so is this just a
| white-labeled NextCloud? Or a straight-up AI generated rip-off
| / resell?
| EdNutting wrote:
| >"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."
|
| https://office.eu/faq
|
| Of which, Files, Talk, Office and Groupware are all just
| NextCloud services where they've swapped "Nextcloud" for "EU"
| in the name.
|
| >"Office.EU is a service offered and operated by EUfforic
| Europe BV, registered with the Dutch chamber of commerce
| under registration number 98746243 and having its address at
| Dr. Kuyperstraat 10-A at (2514 BB) The Hague, the
| Netherlands."
|
| I wouldn't personally trust a company that appears to be
| claiming another company's services as some revolutionary new
| thing, when it's just reselling them. And it was registered
| in November 2025 with no other information available - why
| would anyone gamble all their company data on a company that
| has appeared as quickly as it might disappear? Who are the
| owners/founders even?
|
| Anyway, this was a waste of time.
| oever wrote:
| Nextcloud does not provide hosting, only 3rd level support.
| So any commercial hosting of Nextcloud will be done by
| other companies. There are many companies to choose from.
|
| https://nextcloud.com/partners/
|
| Personally, I would only choose companies that are listed
| as a partner because then I can see what level of support
| they buy from Nextcloud.
| my-next-account wrote:
| It says that it's based on Nextcloud, which is AGPL, so they
| better F:ing cough up the source code :-)
| janeway wrote:
| Yes, I searched for the same. No evidence this has anything to
| do with the European Union. More like a vibe-coded landing page
| with user signup form.
|
| Edit: I am certain this is one or two people vibe coding then
| will pitch to VCs when the waitlist has 1000 people.
|
| Listing major company logos in their banner: "The organizations
| listed here use similar technology (Nextcloud) as part of their
| operations. Their inclusion is for illustrative purposes only."
| jadamson wrote:
| I like how some of the logos are inexplicably upside down:
|
| https://office.eu/images/social-proof/tu-berlin.svg
| https://office.eu/images/social-proof/itzbund.svg
| Void_ wrote:
| Are we gonna talk about that cookie banner?
| https://cleanshot.com/share/cDQ5RMkP
| SlackingOff123 wrote:
| Looks like a reasonable cookie banner to me: Deny (all), Custom
| selection and Accept all.
|
| It even works perfectly with Consent-O-Matic extension.
| Xylakant wrote:
| It's a perfectly not reasonable cookie banner. If you click
| on Details, you can see that they're not using marketing,
| statistics, or any other kind of cookies apart from the
| technically necessary. Which is great, but also means that
| they don't even need a banner. It could just go away.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| what about it?
| lashull wrote:
| 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?
| toinewx wrote:
| this whole thing is a bait
| bradleybuda wrote:
| XHR requests to cookiebot.com -> dig cookiebot.com ->
| 141.193.213.20 -> ipinfo.io -> Austin, TX
| rsynnott wrote:
| 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
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Isn't Proton Docs European? Not that any European government
| would support them, because they don't spy on their users.
| gzread wrote:
| I thought Proton did spy on their users.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| 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 numerique_ [1] developed by
| the French government or _CryptPad_ [2] developed by XWiki, a
| French company based in Paris.
|
| [1] https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/
|
| [2] https://cryptpad.org/
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Cryptpad is great.
| jarym wrote:
| Offices are going out of fashion.. why name a product Office in
| 2026?
| bcye wrote:
| Weird product page, why would you put the number of member states
| and residents Europe has in your ,,feature" section?
| belst wrote:
| This seems to be one guy who repackages nextcloud and markets it
| as the "european alternative" as a quick cashcrab without any own
| developments
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Has anybody tested the Email client? Is it somehow on par with
| Outlook (Desktop/install version)?
| hmstx wrote:
| 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.
|
| Tsh, marketing. (see Bill Hicks on marketing).
| pentagrama wrote:
| About pricing [1]:
|
| > 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
| haunter wrote:
| "Is Office.EU a scam?" https://blog.tomaszdunia.pl/officeeu-eng/
| Confiks wrote:
| This is just a Nextcloud rebrand with a confusing domain name. It
| claims "Core is [100%] Open Source" but no source code is
| provided beyond what's already available in the upstream
| projects, and it's unlikely that there will be (as this happens a
| lot). It's a one-man project without a track record or
| certifications based out of a shared office space [1].
|
| And don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with starting a
| business rebranding Nextcloud and keeping your development closed
| source, as long as you're honest about that, which this
| initiative is not.
|
| If you're looking for a Nextcloud hoster, there's a long list of
| partners here [2] that have contractually obligated themselves to
| contribute back to Nextcloud for every user they onboard.
|
| [1] https://blog.tomaszdunia.pl/officeeu-eng/
|
| [2] https://nextcloud.com/partners/
| user2722 wrote:
| Agreed. But please, someone change [2] to have a freakin'
| direct link to the Nextcloud product/service offered by the
| linked website.
| F3nd0 wrote:
| > there's nothing wrong with starting a business rebranding
| Nextcloud and keeping your development closed source, as long
| as you're honest about that, which this initiative is not.
|
| I thought Nextcloud was released under the AGPL, making this
| very much _not_ okay by default. So either I misunderstood
| something or Office.eu got a permission to make non-free
| modifications? (Going by what you said; I have not dived into
| this.)
| winstonwinston wrote:
| If it just says that it is partly based on Nextcloud, that
| does not imply they modified Nextcloud code at all. Other
| parts of the platform could be based on some other code, even
| closed one.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Er... It is not hidden?
|
| _" About Office.eu
|
| Office.eu is a 100% European all-in-one Office Suite
| collaboration platform. The software is partly built on
| Nextcloud, the leading European open source platform."_
|
| This is literally on the linked page. They are upfront about
| it.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| If the EU is successful in this endeavour, then the US will lean
| on them to abandon it.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree that this should have had a different name,
| gonna be different come up with a good name.
|
| As for open source as they claim ... can't find the code or a
| link to it on their site.
|
| So far this smells like a lot of intent but I'm not sure what
| this is.
| crudbug wrote:
| Some commercial alternatives to MS Office:
|
| https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
|
| https://www.softmaker.com/en/
|
| https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite
|
| https://www.group-office.com/
|
| https://www.icewarp.com/
|
| https://www.bitrix24.com/
|
| https://fengoffice.com/
|
| https://www.hancomdocs.com/en/
|
| https://www.larksuite.com/en_sg/
|
| https://www.polarisoffice.com/en/
| niemandhier wrote:
| I prefer this : https://www.opendesk.eu/
|
| What we need to get independent is the public infrastructures.
|
| That has nothing to do with current tensions between Europe and
| the US.
|
| It's just unbecoming of a nation to depend in its core on the
| good will of another.
| thih9 wrote:
| Is this by some random company that happens to rent an address in
| Hague? And even that is uncertain because there's no actual
| address except a vague OSM pin. And no company name either.
|
| This seems untrustworthy, double so for a product that claims to
| prioritize transparency.
|
| > Our headquarters are in The Netherlands (The Hague). Contact us
| to book a meeting or ask any questions.
|
| source: https://office.eu/contact
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Yea the FAQ does not give a good impression.
|
| "The Premium and Ultimate plans offer EU Talk for larger
| meetings up to * users."
| stephen_g wrote:
| Sounds like when there was that news of " _Europe_ is creating
| a social media website called 'W' to compete with X" and it
| just turned out it was some random tiny company.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| The problem is that the Oslo world is deeply encoded into the DNA
| of the European union and its elites. The very goal of
| "restoring" the old world is what they have in mind. The moment
| that goal seems to even just return as a hallucination, they will
| drop all of these initiatives and defect. Everyone knows, so
| nobody even tries to get something real built.
|
| With the university who trained these politicians, with the
| institutions who shaped them, with these politicians who created
| this multi-crisis - believing everyone out there was invested in
| a stable world as they were- a independent Europe is not
| possible. They just have to much hackable surface, to much API,
| they will crawl before any hacker offering them a way "back out"
| with the decades to come.
| 8note wrote:
| why isnt the EU sovereign office platform just libreoffice
| contributions?
|
| rework it into a web friendly version.
|
| what requirements does the EU have for not using libre office?
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| To preface, I am Swedish.
|
| But I work in IT and Office 365 is not "Office suite online"
| anymore. Office 365 started with running Exchange in the cloud by
| MS as it is a PITA for IT. That was basically it.
|
| Office 365 is now:
|
| - Office suite, both online and desktop apps (Vital for full
| feature Excel)
|
| - Entra for Users, Groups and Policy, SSO, conditional access,
| MFA (Entra is actually Azure AD, not sure if this is still the
| case but all Office 365 get an Azure AD tenant it runs on)
|
| - Device management via Intune, that is policy, push
| apps/installs, reinstalls, Autopilot, run scripts etc on
| machines, device state config
|
| - File sharing with Sharepoint & Teams & personal Onedrive (this
| also adds endpoint backup)
|
| - Teams - chat, video, workspace - We live in Teams at work.
|
| - Email (that includes admin, extensive admin)
|
| - DLP - Data loss prevention
|
| - The power suite where users & admins can make their own apps
|
| + MS Graph API for all this
|
| Oh, and it comes with Copilot chat baked in (GTP 5.3 based now)
| with enterprise controls.
|
| At a big company you can have people ONLY working on the Entra
| part to secure user accounts. Or people ONLY on Intune to setup
| and manage PCs, policy etc.
|
| Office 365 is a beast and I will argue GSuite does not match up
| as companies basically HAVE to buy Slack on the side to get
| parity. Also sysadmin on GSuite sucks.
|
| The link actually made me laugh but also sad. It is frankly
| embarrassing. We in EU can do tech Spotify, Klarna, Lovable,
| Mojang, Dice, Arelion, Ericsson and this is only in Sweden. Look
| at a 4G network, it is insanley complex.
|
| So yea not sure what the solution is. But this is too little too
| late. It should have started in 2008 maybe they would have a
| chance. It is also sheer numbers. MS is massive and Azure/O365 is
| their cash cow now. They make sure it is damn good.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Yeah no. I want entirely offline stuff that runs within equipment
| I completely control going forwards.
|
| One thing this whole current shit show says is geopolitics are
| too unstable to put your data into any system or legal
| jurisdiction you don't directly control.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| > You will be able to choose. Office EU can connect to different
| AI providers through APIs, such as ChatGPT, Mistral, and others
|
| Seems a misstep to list an American AI provider first...
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I wonder about their pricing.
|
| I was also looking at infomaniak.com .
|
| I'm trying to move away from MS 365 myself, both because of
| Trump, AI but also because Microsoft keeps making it work worse
| and worse with Firefox. The latest thing (as of a day or 2 ago)
| is every 30 minutes redirecting my outlook web to the "You just
| signed out of your account" page :( So I have to sign back in
| every time I use it, it used to simply stay open (and no settings
| were changed on the backend). How I hate these guys.
|
| The most annoying thing is that none of this happens when I set
| my user agent to MS Edge on Windows. So they are purposefully
| breaking this.
| amelius wrote:
| Trademark lawyers are raising their eyebrows.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-15 23:00 UTC)