7 ms·

I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. It’s AGPL, open source, and almost infinitely more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone comin

I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. It’s AGPL, open source, and almost infinitely more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone coming from Microsoft Office.

Saris 3y ago
Are the desktop apps open source too? I have a faint memory of only their document server being open source or something like that.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Sure are. https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors The headless server is Apache, the client and visual elements AGPL, which might be the confusion.
  - mofosyne 3y ago
    Could the offline editor interface with the online editor? Would be handy for a hybrid approach for reliability purposes.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      I don’t believe that they have very much proprietary code. I know that if you spin up their document server “community edition,” it has a limit of 20 simultaneous users without a support subscription. This, however, can easily be legally patched around. It’s more just to make a point that it’s not supported without talking to them about a proper deployment. They also might have some code that is proprietary to make that large deployment easier, but it’s not required as long as you don’t mind the AGPL. You can actually try this yourself with their NextCloud plugin. LibreOffice also has a cloud version available but it’s… let’s just say, in my opinion, it’s very bad.
    - circuit10 3y ago
      You can open documents stored online in the desktop editors but there’s no offline syncing or anything so it effectively just opens a browser tab
  - Saris 3y ago
    Oh nice!
  - flashback2199 3y ago
    Thanks, your comments convinced me to finally download and apt install
JadeNB 3y ago
> I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. It’s AGPL, open source, and almost infinitely more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone coming from Microsoft Office. As someone who doesn't even know MS Office well enough to know what I'm missing, what's unintuitive about LibreOffice to someone who knows MS Office?
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  Looks like OnlyOffice uses a ribbon UI that looks to be pretty well modeled on the MS Office pattern. Somewhat better preservation of muscle memory. I am not saying that Libreoffice has a worse interface (or really 'unintuitive').. Just more different from MS Office.
  - lights0123 3y ago
    LibreOffice also offers one that's fairly decent, just not enabled by default. It has many other modes as well: https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2023/01/Enable-ribbon-tabbed-view-in-LibreOffice.png https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2023/01/Enable-ribbon-tab...
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  It's quite intuitive if you learned on Office '97 or anything up to '07. If you learned on '07+, you might want a ribbon interface instead. But LO has that available; not sure how good it is.
dhc02 3y ago
My only serious gripe with OnlyOffice is that when opening a CSV, you have to choose an encoding and delimiter, and there is no way to set a default. You must click twice, in two places, every single time you open a CSV.
- Hitton 3y ago
  I've just tried opening csv in LibreOffice and it asked me for it too. However sane options were already selected so it was just one additional click.
- PrayagBhakar 3y ago
  You have to do this with Excel as well to avoid your data automagically being formatted and/or truncated.
  - ale42 3y ago
    So true... opening a CSV in Excel is like playing the lottery. Sometimes it opens fine, sometimes not, it even depends on the character encoding of the CSV and whether you double-click the file, open it or drag it inside Excel. Sometimes you get the "import text file" window where you have to choose the delimiter, sometimes everything gets in a single column, and sometimes you get what you want.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  CSV is not a standard (rfc4180 exists but only very few things actually pay attention to it) so no behavior is a sane behavior when trying to import it.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    You sound like a C compiler. "This is technically undefined behavior so whatever" is not a useful guiding principle for user interfaces.
    - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
_atreeonmyhouse 3y ago
There is some confusion here. The linked GitHub repo clearly says Apache License, but their commercial website does say AGPL. They're not even remotely similar. The AGPL is regarded as so toxic that nearly all companies where office suites matter, place it on a "do not use" list. It's a good way to artificially limit your potential customers. It doesn't matter that they have a page saying "sure go ahead and use it internally" - most places won't touch it with a 10m pole, by policy.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  The document server is Apache, but the editors and visual components are AGPL.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  That’s so sad. I’d hate to work at a shop that wouldn’t allow AGPL’d software for internal tooling. What a completely legally unnecessary, productivity-hobbling decision. Perhaps the best feature of the AGPL is that it predominately hampers companies with ineffective legal departments.
  - _atreeonmyhouse 3y ago
    One of the most notable examples is Google.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Pity. They said it’s because they’re afraid someone outside Google would use it, which is legitimate for companies without sufficient technical SBOL controls to prevent using third party software in violation of its terms. Their take is basically “we don’t have a way to keep our internal software internal, so you can’t use it at all, ever, for anything”. I wouldn’t have expected that of them.
    - hedora 3y ago
      That makes sense. GPL 3 is basically a non-starter for people that ship hardware, but is fine for people that provide web services. AGPL would level the playing field between Google and device manufacturers and on-prem software companies (like Apple and Microsoft). Of course they don’t want their employees to use and indirectly support that ecosystem! I wish they’d produce a GPL 4 that is closer to the AGPL. v3 backfired and is severely hurting end-users’ freedom in practice.
pkz 3y ago
I hear the company owner is a russian citizen. Maybe that is a problem.
- ognarb 3y ago
  The company has quite some links to Russia. Until recently it was owned by a Russian company but headquartered in Riga, now they seems to have moved the headquarters in Singapore according to this Wikipedia edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1172666163 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/117266616... (which I'm not sure I can trust completely as there as been multiple attempt to remove any mention of Russia on that page) But if I had to guess, the major development effort is still done in Russia.
Karellen 3y ago
> I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. There's an RFP/ITP (Request For Package/Intent To Package) issue for Debian filed in June 2020, but no evidence that any DDs have wanted to pick it up or start working on it. I guess LibreOffice works well enough for all of them that need it. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963070 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963070 > It's [...] more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone coming from Microsoft Office. I've just had a look at some of the OnlyOffice screenshots, and they mostly look like it has a Ribbon-style interface. It might be that Debian devs are mostly old-school enough that LibreOffice's classic menu and toolbars is more similar to the MS Office they used to use than a Ribbon. That said, LibreOffice does have multiple User Interface variants (accessible from the "View" menu in the standard UI), including a "Tabbed" option that is Ribbon-like if that's more your thing. (And some others, but I've not explored them much.)

I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. It’s AGPL, open source, and almost infinitely more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone coming from Microsoft Office.

Saris 3y ago

Are the desktop apps open source too? I have a faint memory of only their document server being open source or something like that.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Sure are. https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors The headless server is Apache, the client and visual elements AGPL, which might be the confusion.
- mofosyne 3y ago
  Could the offline editor interface with the online editor? Would be handy for a hybrid approach for reliability purposes.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I don’t believe that they have very much proprietary code. I know that if you spin up their document server “community edition,” it has a limit of 20 simultaneous users without a support subscription. This, however, can easily be legally patched around. It’s more just to make a point that it’s not supported without talking to them about a proper deployment. They also might have some code that is proprietary to make that large deployment easier, but it’s not required as long as you don’t mind the AGPL. You can actually try this yourself with their NextCloud plugin. LibreOffice also has a cloud version available but it’s… let’s just say, in my opinion, it’s very bad.
  - circuit10 3y ago
    You can open documents stored online in the desktop editors but there’s no offline syncing or anything so it effectively just opens a browser tab
- Saris 3y ago
  Oh nice!
- flashback2199 3y ago
  Thanks, your comments convinced me to finally download and apt install

JadeNB 3y ago

> I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. It’s AGPL, open source, and almost infinitely more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone coming from Microsoft Office. As someone who doesn't even know MS Office well enough to know what I'm missing, what's unintuitive about LibreOffice to someone who knows MS Office?

icegreentea2 3y ago
Looks like OnlyOffice uses a ribbon UI that looks to be pretty well modeled on the MS Office pattern. Somewhat better preservation of muscle memory. I am not saying that Libreoffice has a worse interface (or really 'unintuitive').. Just more different from MS Office.
- lights0123 3y ago
  LibreOffice also offers one that's fairly decent, just not enabled by default. It has many other modes as well: https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2023/01/Enable-ribbon-tabbed-view-in-LibreOffice.png https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2023/01/Enable-ribbon-tab...
mixmastamyk 3y ago
It's quite intuitive if you learned on Office '97 or anything up to '07. If you learned on '07+, you might want a ribbon interface instead. But LO has that available; not sure how good it is.

dhc02 3y ago

My only serious gripe with OnlyOffice is that when opening a CSV, you have to choose an encoding and delimiter, and there is no way to set a default. You must click twice, in two places, every single time you open a CSV.

Hitton 3y ago
I've just tried opening csv in LibreOffice and it asked me for it too. However sane options were already selected so it was just one additional click.
PrayagBhakar 3y ago
You have to do this with Excel as well to avoid your data automagically being formatted and/or truncated.
- ale42 3y ago
  So true... opening a CSV in Excel is like playing the lottery. Sometimes it opens fine, sometimes not, it even depends on the character encoding of the CSV and whether you double-click the file, open it or drag it inside Excel. Sometimes you get the "import text file" window where you have to choose the delimiter, sometimes everything gets in a single column, and sometimes you get what you want.
ElectricalUnion 3y ago
CSV is not a standard (rfc4180 exists but only very few things actually pay attention to it) so no behavior is a sane behavior when trying to import it.
- stonogo 3y ago
  You sound like a C compiler. "This is technically undefined behavior so whatever" is not a useful guiding principle for user interfaces.
  - ElectricalUnion 3y ago

_atreeonmyhouse 3y ago

There is some confusion here. The linked GitHub repo clearly says Apache License, but their commercial website does say AGPL. They're not even remotely similar. The AGPL is regarded as so toxic that nearly all companies where office suites matter, place it on a "do not use" list. It's a good way to artificially limit your potential customers. It doesn't matter that they have a page saying "sure go ahead and use it internally" - most places won't touch it with a 10m pole, by policy.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
The document server is Apache, but the editors and visual components are AGPL.
kstrauser 3y ago
That’s so sad. I’d hate to work at a shop that wouldn’t allow AGPL’d software for internal tooling. What a completely legally unnecessary, productivity-hobbling decision. Perhaps the best feature of the AGPL is that it predominately hampers companies with ineffective legal departments.
- _atreeonmyhouse 3y ago
  One of the most notable examples is Google.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Pity. They said it’s because they’re afraid someone outside Google would use it, which is legitimate for companies without sufficient technical SBOL controls to prevent using third party software in violation of its terms. Their take is basically “we don’t have a way to keep our internal software internal, so you can’t use it at all, ever, for anything”. I wouldn’t have expected that of them.
  - hedora 3y ago
    That makes sense. GPL 3 is basically a non-starter for people that ship hardware, but is fine for people that provide web services. AGPL would level the playing field between Google and device manufacturers and on-prem software companies (like Apple and Microsoft). Of course they don’t want their employees to use and indirectly support that ecosystem! I wish they’d produce a GPL 4 that is closer to the AGPL. v3 backfired and is severely hurting end-users’ freedom in practice.

pkz 3y ago

I hear the company owner is a russian citizen. Maybe that is a problem.

ognarb 3y ago
The company has quite some links to Russia. Until recently it was owned by a Russian company but headquartered in Riga, now they seems to have moved the headquarters in Singapore according to this Wikipedia edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1172666163 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/117266616... (which I'm not sure I can trust completely as there as been multiple attempt to remove any mention of Russia on that page) But if I had to guess, the major development effort is still done in Russia.

Karellen 3y ago

> I’m surprised ONLYOFFICE isn’t more popular in more distributions. There's an RFP/ITP (Request For Package/Intent To Package) issue for Debian filed in June 2020, but no evidence that any DDs have wanted to pick it up or start working on it. I guess LibreOffice works well enough for all of them that need it. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963070 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963070 > It's [...] more intuitive than LibreOffice to anyone coming from Microsoft Office. I've just had a look at some of the OnlyOffice screenshots, and they mostly look like it has a Ribbon-style interface. It might be that Debian devs are mostly old-school enough that LibreOffice's classic menu and toolbars is more similar to the MS Office they used to use than a Ribbon. That said, LibreOffice does have multiple User Interface variants (accessible from the "View" menu in the standard UI), including a "Tabbed" option that is Ribbon-like if that's more your thing. (And some others, but I've not explored them much.)