Euro-Office ships next week amid OnlyOffice license dispute

Euro-Office, an open-source office suite developed by a group of European companies and organizations, begins shipping next week as integrations in partner products, starting with Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring.

The web-based editor supports DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF, ODT, ODS, ODP and TXT formats. It allows real-time collaboration on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs, and users can save edits back to the hosting application or download files in multiple formats.

Project partners include IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian, BTactic, OpenXchange and Office.eu. Nextcloud integrations are scheduled first, followed by IONOS Managed Nextcloud customers and IONOS’ Nextcloud Workspace later this summer. XWiki plans integration in the fourth quarter and Office.eu has similar deployment plans.

Developers working on Euro-Office say they prepared the codebase for production by adding automated testing, translating code comments into English, improving documentation and applying security updates to simplify contribution and integration.

Frank Karlitschek, Nextcloud’s CEO, wrote that the top priority was to provide a version people could use, noting work to clean the code, implement security fixes and integrate Euro-Office with existing solutions. Karlitschek added that desktop and mobile clients and stronger support for ODF formats are planned for the next development cycle.

OnlyOffice has disputed the release. The company says its software is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPLv3) with additional requirements that include preserving OnlyOffice branding in derivative works and providing attribution. OnlyOffice wrote in a statement: “These conditions are not optional. They are a fundamental part of using the software legally and ethically. Any argument that a modified or derivative version of the software may be distributed under a ‘pure’ AGPLv3 license, excluding the additional conditions imposed pursuant to Section 7, is legally unfounded.”

The dispute focuses on whether Euro-Office satisfied OnlyOffice’s stated additional obligations and whether those obligations are enforceable alongside AGPLv3 terms. Euro-Office’s code is publicly available on GitHub and project backers describe the effort as part of an initiative to reduce reliance on U.S.-based productivity platforms.

Vendors plan staged rollouts across hosted and self-managed offerings while the licensing disagreement remains unresolved. Developers say further work will target client applications and standards compliance. The parties have not announced a resolution timeline for the licensing dispute.