7 ms·

Collabora Office: The enterprise-ready edition of LibreOffice

178 points by crazypython 6y ago

crazypython 6y ago
LibreOffice and Collabora Office both have an online version, which works in the browser.
- aviau 6y ago
  Is there a demo that we can play with? Collabora seems to be hiding theirs behind a web form.
  - snuxoll 6y ago
    https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/ https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/
  - alessioalex 6y ago
    You can find a customized version of it on web.de / gmx.net / mail.com under the product name of "Online Office", once you login with a registered user.
knob 6y ago
We've been using the free version of Collabora Office for about 11 months now. (This version is called CODE). They won't do under-20 count licensing. If your org/corp is under 20-count, just use it. So far, it has been 98% perfect. One or two hiccups, yet: we own our data, in our Debian servers. Android app works awesome. Browser works awesome. Give it a go if you want.
- crazypython 6y ago
  I wonder what benefits a license brings. It seems like the entire thing is under a FOSS license. https://www.collaboraoffice.com/terms/collabora-online-mplv2/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/terms/collabora-online-mplv2...
  - ognarb 6y ago
    You get support. This is an important thing for big corporations and governmental organizations.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Is it though? What support do you imagine people requiring for an office suite? I pay for MS Office. I can’t really imagine what kind of individual support issues I could raise? If a document I need doesn’t open then it doesn’t open - having the bug fixed a week later is absolutely no help to me, and I’d just ask the sender to send in a different format in the mean time so really what’s the point?
      - antattack 6y ago
        Vulnerability fixes, post upgrade support, bug fixes.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        How many millions of people use MS Office and Google Docs with absolutely no support? I fear they are misunderstanding how commoditised office software has become.
        mbreese 6y ago
        Enterprise is a different beast. They require someone to call when something goes wrong. It might not ever go wrong, but having the contract is still important. Most individuals don’t need anything like this type of support. But if you’re a large company or government, it’s required.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > But if you’re a large company or government, it’s required. Even the LibreOffice people agree it doesn't really seem to be required. Hence their panic. > It is routinely the case that I meet organizations that have deployed free LibreOffice without long term support, with no security updates etc. Try the Cabinet Office in the UK (at the center of UK Government), or a large European Gov't Department I recently visited - 15,000 seats - with some great FLOSS enthusiasm, but simply no conceptual frame that deploying un-supported FLOSS in the enterprise hurts the software that they then rely on. Or a giant Pharma company in the news right now; companies do it left & right.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  can this 20 user limit be bypassed somehow? if the software is under MPL, does that allow restricting functionality in the software like the user limit imposed here? How has your experience been than an installed libreoffice? I have this thing where like 5-7 users have to work on a network share drive on "xls" files. For over 15 years now we have worked on this setup whereby everyone knows the folder structure, the naming scheme among other things. I want to try this browser thing for "collaborative editing" which isnt present in excel or libreoffice desktop but i fail to understand how i can manage this. do i have to map the network drive over to the browser engine? do i open the network drive as always and double click the file to run in browser?
  - joelellis 6y ago
    I think you misunderstood what they're saying - you can get it for free no matter the user count, as it's open source software. They only do support contracts with organisations greater than 20 people.
    - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
      you are wrong. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_... Keep in mind that every development version (even the official one) has a maximum limit of 20 concurrent connections.
archanox 6y ago
Why was LibreOffice forked? Wouldn't it be beneficial to roll these changes directly upstream?
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  It’s confusing, but it’s not really a fork but just a rebrand. (Collabora Online is a fork of LibreOffice Online I ... think.)
  - ajayyy 6y ago
    Yes, and most of the LibreOffice Online work has actually been done by Collabora, and it is upstreamed
    - shp0ngle 6y ago
      When I google "LibreOffice Online", it's some old unmaintained repo; I can only find "Collabora Online". But whatever, maybe I google wrong
- zucker42 6y ago
  Collabora is roughly to LibreOffice what RedHat is to GNU/Linux.
- alessioalex 6y ago
  95% of LibreOffice Online commits were made by Collabora anyway, they mostly just wanted some recognition for their work I suppose.
accurrent 6y ago
Curious, does this support libreoffice base?
- marrod-sustreal 6y ago
  It does: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/solutions/collabora-online-and-office/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/solutions/collabora-online-a...
lovedswain 6y ago
Worth a read if you're interested in backstory: https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/ I thought there was a newer LWN article that touched on more recent developments but can't find it
- mkj 6y ago
  This is probably the one you were thinking of https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation
daniel_iversen 6y ago
Seems like[1] Collabora might use profits to support the LibreOffice development, in which case that's a great way to support an important open source platform and also build a company with a FOSS-friendly/supporting business model. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/dgc4ix/can_anyone_explain_the_difference_between/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/dgc4ix/can_anyone_ex...
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  Collabora is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice and basically made the LibreOffice Online themselves.
highpost 6y ago
I want to see Collabora Office integrated as a Google Workspace app. I understand that others want to host their own servers, but I want the longevity of ODF combined with the convenience of a hosted environment like Workspace. I would think that governments that mandate ODF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption) would want the convenience of an online version of LibreOffice combined with a native desktop application suite.
- zucker42 6y ago
  I doubt they want to tie their fortunes to Google, especially given that Google is one of their competitors. Furthermore, Collabora produces mostly (maybe all?) libre software, so integrating with Google doesn't mesh with that. Collabora Office is integrated with NextCloud though.
  - highpost 6y ago
    Thanks, that's what I think their position is. But there are plenty of apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace that are competitive with Google's: LucidChart, draw.io, Zoho, etc. I'm sure these apps more than pay for their integration development costs with new subscription revenue.
- alessioalex 6y ago
  If you are using either one of the following portal it's basically under the name of "Online Office" (there's also mail, cloud and other services similar to what Google has): https://web.de/ https://web.de/ https://gmx.net/ https://gmx.net/ https://mail.com https://mail.com The first two is mainly for German users, the last one is for international ones.
newdude116 6y ago
Also see: https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/
- himujjal 6y ago
  Something in Libreoffice makes me avoid it. No matter what, right now the best office solution is from Microsoft. OnlyOffice identified this and worked to clone the thing, because why not clone the best instead of new designs and changes. This makes it quite good actually. Sure, there are a few bugs here and there but the whole thing works quite good.
  - phendrenad2 6y ago
    Something many open-source projects could learn from. Corporations spend millions on usability R&D and the de-facto open source project equivalent is usually just programmers winging the UI based on nothing.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Because after you clone, you can never diverge. Unless you can match the development resources of the megacorp, you will fall behind. It's a catch 22 to focus software development on duplicating a UI that will comfort people who will never use your software over the software you're duplicating - or if they do, they do it because you're the one they don't have to pay for. Apropos to nothing, Firefox is an interesting project.
walrus01 6y ago
I have to admit I am super sketched out about anything that is derived from a fully open source project, and has a 'try the demo' button on it that pops up a form to fill out your personal details on, which is obviously a pipeline into somebody's CRM system.
- chii 6y ago
  That's where the open source as a "business model" might come in!
- Aachen 6y ago
  This was one of the first things I saw after clicking this "enterprise-ready" title and that's when I closed the tab. I'm happy to see someone polish up LibreOffice and ask money for it, I'd gladly market that to my family who complains about this ugly shit I install for them and my continuing refusal to help them maintain their accustomization with Microsoft products if they're not willing to paying for it, but if I have to even ask for a trial, it's not going to be worth it.
  - dimitar 6y ago
    I think they can use office for 365 for free from their browsers.
    - Aachen 6y ago
      It's 100 euros every year from a quick check. That's more expensive than it used to be without the magic cloud offering.
  - PoignardAzur 6y ago
    I've had an okay experience with OnlyOffice.
- SamuelAdams 6y ago
  You could just click the "try the demo" button without filling in any information.
Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
As much as I love LibreOffice, this does not work really well. From what I understand, a LibreOffice instance is created on a server for every user and the rendered interface is transferred to users via some remote-desktop-like way. This leads to lags and generally very poor performance compared to GoogleDocs. I think the world badly needs a GoogleDocs-like office suite that would be a libre software, would support concurrent editing and would ODT as its default file format. But so far, such product does not exist, unfortunately.
- trenchgun 6y ago
  Hmm. https://code.librehq.com/qhong/crdt.el/ https://code.librehq.com/qhong/crdt.el/ Or maybe: https://github.com/typeintandem/tandem https://github.com/typeintandem/tandem
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    "Office suite" implies that it includes a text processor, electronic spreadsheet and a presentation editor. Both these projects are not even close to being office suites.
- lewisjoe 6y ago
  OnlyOffice has a github organization with open source code for their editors - https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/ https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/
sleepless 6y ago
Wondering if there are any public NextCloud options that have support for Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE). Would be nice if there was a list of public instances on https://forum.collaboraonline.com/ https://forum.collaboraonline.com/
vatican_banker 6y ago
My org uses Google Docs as office suite and I find it quite good and prefer it over any flavour of Microsoft Office. Nevertheless, there's a _huge_ and vocal push against Google Docs suite in favour of Microsoft Office from some internal stakeholders. None of the complaints from this group go beyond something to the tune of "I know Excel better". As good as LibreOffice may be (I personally think it is _not_ better than Google docs) and as much as I like the romantic idea of open source office suite, I don't believe this will be successful/sustainable in the long run. The bulk of office suite users are not interested on using alternatives. These users want office running on their machine, period. I'd even venture to say that most users would rather have apps installed instead of Microsoft Office Online.
- ghaff 6y ago
  If someone's a power user of Excel, I can understand them wanting to stay on Excel even if personally I pretty much just use Google Sheets as an easy to use and format table. >I'd even venture to say that most users would rather have apps installed instead of Microsoft Office Online. I dunno. Maybe if they rarely share documents? But, for me, online sharing and collaborative editing of documents has been a game changer.
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
StarOffice is back!
happyjack 6y ago
I'm an engineer (not software, not a developer, not in "tech") and we have been switching a lot of our workflows to open source software and the like. This isn't because we have a "free" or "libre" fetish, it's more that the open source technologies tend to plug and play better with others, have open standards for file formats etc., and we can have clients and collaborators work on any OS they want. I don't think Collabora is going to be alone in their struggles with this type of business model. From what I can see / understand is that there a few large corporations / govts whatever you like that provide financial support in the form of the Pareto distribution. One or two organizations provide the majority of support (85%+). What this usually means is that the organization(s) pays for support, has the company like Collabora write all the code, and in the end they just take what they want and either re-implement it in a different way or actually have a whole different product than the "public" one. This has a double-edge effect; the few organization who pay for all the time for programmers implement the features they want (why not? they foot the bill) and the developers end up building a product that may or may not be good for the rest of the users. Case in point with LibreOffice and Collabora. Collabora pushes most all the commits, yet they are an online version of an office suite to plugin to Nextcloud, etc. To be honest, LibreOffice should be charging for their product. I'm not sure how they would or what the mechanism would be, but it's great software and has $ value.

178 points by crazypython 6y ago

crazypython 6y ago

LibreOffice and Collabora Office both have an online version, which works in the browser.

aviau 6y ago
Is there a demo that we can play with? Collabora seems to be hiding theirs behind a web form.
- snuxoll 6y ago
  https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/ https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/
- alessioalex 6y ago
  You can find a customized version of it on web.de / gmx.net / mail.com under the product name of "Online Office", once you login with a registered user.

knob 6y ago

We've been using the free version of Collabora Office for about 11 months now. (This version is called CODE). They won't do under-20 count licensing. If your org/corp is under 20-count, just use it. So far, it has been 98% perfect. One or two hiccups, yet: we own our data, in our Debian servers. Android app works awesome. Browser works awesome. Give it a go if you want.

crazypython 6y ago
I wonder what benefits a license brings. It seems like the entire thing is under a FOSS license. https://www.collaboraoffice.com/terms/collabora-online-mplv2/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/terms/collabora-online-mplv2...
- ognarb 6y ago
  You get support. This is an important thing for big corporations and governmental organizations.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Is it though? What support do you imagine people requiring for an office suite? I pay for MS Office. I can’t really imagine what kind of individual support issues I could raise? If a document I need doesn’t open then it doesn’t open - having the bug fixed a week later is absolutely no help to me, and I’d just ask the sender to send in a different format in the mean time so really what’s the point?
    - antattack 6y ago
      Vulnerability fixes, post upgrade support, bug fixes.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        How many millions of people use MS Office and Google Docs with absolutely no support? I fear they are misunderstanding how commoditised office software has become.
        mbreese 6y ago
        Enterprise is a different beast. They require someone to call when something goes wrong. It might not ever go wrong, but having the contract is still important. Most individuals don’t need anything like this type of support. But if you’re a large company or government, it’s required.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > But if you’re a large company or government, it’s required. Even the LibreOffice people agree it doesn't really seem to be required. Hence their panic. > It is routinely the case that I meet organizations that have deployed free LibreOffice without long term support, with no security updates etc. Try the Cabinet Office in the UK (at the center of UK Government), or a large European Gov't Department I recently visited - 15,000 seats - with some great FLOSS enthusiasm, but simply no conceptual frame that deploying un-supported FLOSS in the enterprise hurts the software that they then rely on. Or a giant Pharma company in the news right now; companies do it left & right.
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
can this 20 user limit be bypassed somehow? if the software is under MPL, does that allow restricting functionality in the software like the user limit imposed here? How has your experience been than an installed libreoffice? I have this thing where like 5-7 users have to work on a network share drive on "xls" files. For over 15 years now we have worked on this setup whereby everyone knows the folder structure, the naming scheme among other things. I want to try this browser thing for "collaborative editing" which isnt present in excel or libreoffice desktop but i fail to understand how i can manage this. do i have to map the network drive over to the browser engine? do i open the network drive as always and double click the file to run in browser?
- joelellis 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood what they're saying - you can get it for free no matter the user count, as it's open source software. They only do support contracts with organisations greater than 20 people.
  - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
    you are wrong. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_... Keep in mind that every development version (even the official one) has a maximum limit of 20 concurrent connections.

archanox 6y ago

Why was LibreOffice forked? Wouldn't it be beneficial to roll these changes directly upstream?

shp0ngle 6y ago
It’s confusing, but it’s not really a fork but just a rebrand. (Collabora Online is a fork of LibreOffice Online I ... think.)
- ajayyy 6y ago
  Yes, and most of the LibreOffice Online work has actually been done by Collabora, and it is upstreamed
  - shp0ngle 6y ago
    When I google "LibreOffice Online", it's some old unmaintained repo; I can only find "Collabora Online". But whatever, maybe I google wrong
zucker42 6y ago
Collabora is roughly to LibreOffice what RedHat is to GNU/Linux.
alessioalex 6y ago
95% of LibreOffice Online commits were made by Collabora anyway, they mostly just wanted some recognition for their work I suppose.

accurrent 6y ago

Curious, does this support libreoffice base?

marrod-sustreal 6y ago
It does: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/solutions/collabora-online-and-office/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/solutions/collabora-online-a...

lovedswain 6y ago

Worth a read if you're interested in backstory: https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/ I thought there was a newer LWN article that touched on more recent developments but can't find it

mkj 6y ago
This is probably the one you were thinking of https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ Collabora Online moves out of The Document Foundation

daniel_iversen 6y ago

Seems like[1] Collabora might use profits to support the LibreOffice development, in which case that's a great way to support an important open source platform and also build a company with a FOSS-friendly/supporting business model. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/dgc4ix/can_anyone_explain_the_difference_between/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/dgc4ix/can_anyone_ex...

shp0ngle 6y ago
Collabora is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice and basically made the LibreOffice Online themselves.

highpost 6y ago

I want to see Collabora Office integrated as a Google Workspace app. I understand that others want to host their own servers, but I want the longevity of ODF combined with the convenience of a hosted environment like Workspace. I would think that governments that mandate ODF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption) would want the convenience of an online version of LibreOffice combined with a native desktop application suite.

zucker42 6y ago
I doubt they want to tie their fortunes to Google, especially given that Google is one of their competitors. Furthermore, Collabora produces mostly (maybe all?) libre software, so integrating with Google doesn't mesh with that. Collabora Office is integrated with NextCloud though.
- highpost 6y ago
  Thanks, that's what I think their position is. But there are plenty of apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace that are competitive with Google's: LucidChart, draw.io, Zoho, etc. I'm sure these apps more than pay for their integration development costs with new subscription revenue.
alessioalex 6y ago
If you are using either one of the following portal it's basically under the name of "Online Office" (there's also mail, cloud and other services similar to what Google has): https://web.de/ https://web.de/ https://gmx.net/ https://gmx.net/ https://mail.com https://mail.com The first two is mainly for German users, the last one is for international ones.

newdude116 6y ago

Also see: https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/

himujjal 6y ago
Something in Libreoffice makes me avoid it. No matter what, right now the best office solution is from Microsoft. OnlyOffice identified this and worked to clone the thing, because why not clone the best instead of new designs and changes. This makes it quite good actually. Sure, there are a few bugs here and there but the whole thing works quite good.
- phendrenad2 6y ago
  Something many open-source projects could learn from. Corporations spend millions on usability R&D and the de-facto open source project equivalent is usually just programmers winging the UI based on nothing.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Because after you clone, you can never diverge. Unless you can match the development resources of the megacorp, you will fall behind. It's a catch 22 to focus software development on duplicating a UI that will comfort people who will never use your software over the software you're duplicating - or if they do, they do it because you're the one they don't have to pay for. Apropos to nothing, Firefox is an interesting project.

walrus01 6y ago

I have to admit I am super sketched out about anything that is derived from a fully open source project, and has a 'try the demo' button on it that pops up a form to fill out your personal details on, which is obviously a pipeline into somebody's CRM system.

chii 6y ago
That's where the open source as a "business model" might come in!
Aachen 6y ago
This was one of the first things I saw after clicking this "enterprise-ready" title and that's when I closed the tab. I'm happy to see someone polish up LibreOffice and ask money for it, I'd gladly market that to my family who complains about this ugly shit I install for them and my continuing refusal to help them maintain their accustomization with Microsoft products if they're not willing to paying for it, but if I have to even ask for a trial, it's not going to be worth it.
- dimitar 6y ago
  I think they can use office for 365 for free from their browsers.
  - Aachen 6y ago
    It's 100 euros every year from a quick check. That's more expensive than it used to be without the magic cloud offering.
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  I've had an okay experience with OnlyOffice.
SamuelAdams 6y ago
You could just click the "try the demo" button without filling in any information.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

As much as I love LibreOffice, this does not work really well. From what I understand, a LibreOffice instance is created on a server for every user and the rendered interface is transferred to users via some remote-desktop-like way. This leads to lags and generally very poor performance compared to GoogleDocs. I think the world badly needs a GoogleDocs-like office suite that would be a libre software, would support concurrent editing and would ODT as its default file format. But so far, such product does not exist, unfortunately.

trenchgun 6y ago
Hmm. https://code.librehq.com/qhong/crdt.el/ https://code.librehq.com/qhong/crdt.el/ Or maybe: https://github.com/typeintandem/tandem https://github.com/typeintandem/tandem
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  "Office suite" implies that it includes a text processor, electronic spreadsheet and a presentation editor. Both these projects are not even close to being office suites.
lewisjoe 6y ago
OnlyOffice has a github organization with open source code for their editors - https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/ https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/

sleepless 6y ago

Wondering if there are any public NextCloud options that have support for Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE). Would be nice if there was a list of public instances on https://forum.collaboraonline.com/ https://forum.collaboraonline.com/

vatican_banker 6y ago

My org uses Google Docs as office suite and I find it quite good and prefer it over any flavour of Microsoft Office. Nevertheless, there's a _huge_ and vocal push against Google Docs suite in favour of Microsoft Office from some internal stakeholders. None of the complaints from this group go beyond something to the tune of "I know Excel better". As good as LibreOffice may be (I personally think it is _not_ better than Google docs) and as much as I like the romantic idea of open source office suite, I don't believe this will be successful/sustainable in the long run. The bulk of office suite users are not interested on using alternatives. These users want office running on their machine, period. I'd even venture to say that most users would rather have apps installed instead of Microsoft Office Online.

ghaff 6y ago
If someone's a power user of Excel, I can understand them wanting to stay on Excel even if personally I pretty much just use Google Sheets as an easy to use and format table. >I'd even venture to say that most users would rather have apps installed instead of Microsoft Office Online. I dunno. Maybe if they rarely share documents? But, for me, online sharing and collaborative editing of documents has been a game changer.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago

StarOffice is back!

happyjack 6y ago

I'm an engineer (not software, not a developer, not in "tech") and we have been switching a lot of our workflows to open source software and the like. This isn't because we have a "free" or "libre" fetish, it's more that the open source technologies tend to plug and play better with others, have open standards for file formats etc., and we can have clients and collaborators work on any OS they want. I don't think Collabora is going to be alone in their struggles with this type of business model. From what I can see / understand is that there a few large corporations / govts whatever you like that provide financial support in the form of the Pareto distribution. One or two organizations provide the majority of support (85%+). What this usually means is that the organization(s) pays for support, has the company like Collabora write all the code, and in the end they just take what they want and either re-implement it in a different way or actually have a whole different product than the "public" one. This has a double-edge effect; the few organization who pay for all the time for programmers implement the features they want (why not? they foot the bill) and the developers end up building a product that may or may not be good for the rest of the users. Case in point with LibreOffice and Collabora. Collabora pushes most all the commits, yet they are an online version of an office suite to plugin to Nextcloud, etc. To be honest, LibreOffice should be charging for their product. I'm not sure how they would or what the mechanism would be, but it's great software and has $ value.