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Europe Just Built Its Own Microsoft Office — And It's Free| — Transcript

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0:00In February 2025, the chief prosecutor
0:02of the International Criminal Court was
0:03hit with US sanctions. A few months
0:06later, reports surfaced that his
0:07Microsoft email account had stopped
0:09working. Microsoft says it never cut off
0:11the court itself, but think about what
0:13that moment taught every government in
0:15Europe. A political decision in
0:16Washington can reach into the inbox of a
0:18court in The Hague. Now, fast forward to
0:20March 27th, 2026. A coalition of
0:24European companies announces an office
0:25suite with a word processor, a
0:27spreadsheet editor, a presentation tool,
0:29and a PDF editor. Built to open and save
0:31the same Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
0:34files the whole planet uses. Built in
0:36Europe, hosted in Europe, governed in
0:38Europe. It's called EuroOffice.
0:40On June 9th, version 1.0 went stable.
0:43And just last month, on September 16th,
0:45Nextcloud announced the piece everyone
0:47said was missing. A desktop app. Over
0:50the last few days, I went deep on this.
0:51I read the GitHub repositories, the
0:53Nextcloud and Ionos press releases, the
0:56angry blog posts from the company that
0:57got forked, and the open letters from
0:59the open source community. Honestly, the
1:02real story is messier and way more
1:04interesting than the headline Europe
1:06built its own Microsoft Office. So,
1:08here's what we're covering. Why Europe
1:10wanted this so badly, where EuroOffice
1:12actually came from, who's behind it,
1:14whether it's really free, and a fight
1:17over a single clause in a software
1:18license that has split the open source
1:20world. I'll also show you something
1:21security researchers found in the code
1:23that most coverage skipped. If you like
1:25this kind of deep dive into tech and
1:27power, subscribe because this one gets
1:29better as it goes.
1:31Let's start with the problem because to
1:32understand why this matters, you have to
1:34understand what Europe is up against.
1:36Microsoft shipped Word in 1983. In 1990,
1:40it bundled Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
1:42into a single product called Office. As
1:44Windows spread to nearly every desktop
1:46on Earth, Office spread with it.
1:48WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, the giants
1:52of the 1980s, faded away. And then
1:54something happened that mattered far
1:56more than market share. The file formats
1:58became the language of business. If
2:00someone sent you a DOCX, you needed
2:02Office to open it properly. Everyone
2:04used Office because everyone else used
2:06Office. Over 30 years, Office stopped
2:08being a product and became
2:09infrastructure. And infrastructure is
2:11brutally hard to replace. So, why now?
2:13Why did 2026 become the year Europe
2:15decided to try?
2:17Start with money.
2:18On July 1st, 2026, Microsoft's new
2:21Microsoft 365 pricing took effect,
2:23announced months earlier and tied to new
2:25AI security and management features.
2:28Seven of its nine business plans went up
2:30by anywhere between 5 and 33% in US
2:32dollar markets. Business Basic climbed
2:34from $6 to 7 per user per month.
2:37Business Standard went from 1250 to 14.
2:40The steepest jump hit frontline worker
2:41plans, up 33%. Government versions of
2:44Office 365 E3 are rising roughly 13%
2:47over two steps, 10% now and 3% a year
2:50later. Multiply that by hundreds of
2:52thousands of civil servants every month,
2:54and it lands on taxpayers.
2:56But, honestly, money isn't the real
2:57story. Control is. Your entire
3:00administration writes documents in an
3:02American company's software. It stores
3:04them in that company's cloud. And it
3:06depends on that company's licensing
3:07decisions under the laws of a country
3:09that isn't yours. In June 2025, during a
3:12hearing in the French Senate, a senior
3:14Microsoft France executive was asked
3:16under oath whether he could guarantee
3:18that French citizens' data would never
3:19be handed to US authorities without
3:21French approval. He said he couldn't.
3:24That's the US Cloud Act at work, which
3:26can compel American companies to hand
3:27over data they control even when that
3:29data sits on servers in Europe.
3:31Add the ICC episode to that, and digital
3:34sovereignty stopped being a conference
3:36slogan. It became a procurement problem
3:38with a deadline, and governments started
3:39moving. The German state of
3:41Schleswig-Holstein announced in April
3:422024 that it would migrate around 30,000
3:46employees to open source. Reports now
3:48say roughly 80% of its workstations have
3:50moved with license savings of over 15
3:52million euros. Denmark's Ministry of
3:54Digital Affairs announced in 2025 that
3:57it was leaving Microsoft Office for
3:58LibreOffice, and Copenhagen and Aarhus
4:01have announced plans to phase out
4:02Microsoft systems, too.
4:04Austria's Armed Forces moved around
4:0616,000 workstations to LibreOffice,
4:08saying the goal was sovereignty, not
4:10savings.
4:11And on October 31st, 2025, the
4:14International Criminal Court itself
4:15confirmed it was replacing Microsoft
4:16with Open Desk, a suite from Germany's
4:19Center for Digital Sovereignty. Then, in
4:21April 2026, France's digital agency,
4:24DINUM, said it would move its own
4:25workstations from Windows to Linux, and
4:28told every ministry to produce a plan by
4:29autumn for reducing dependence on
4:31non-European technology. So, the demand
4:33is real, and it has budgets behind it.
4:36But, here's the problem nobody likes to
4:37say out loud. Building an office suite
4:39from nothing is brutal. The hard part is
4:41opening a 20-year-old spreadsheet from a
4:42supplier with its odd formulas and
4:44charts and formatting quirks, and having
4:46it look exactly right. That takes years.
4:49So, the coalition didn't start from
4:50zero. It started from somebody else's
4:52code. And that decision lit the fuse on
4:54one of the loudest fights open source
4:55has seen in years.
4:57Before I tell you whose code, I want to
4:59ask you something.
5:00If your company or your government could
5:02drop Microsoft Office tomorrow, and the
5:04replacement handled your files, would
5:06you actually switch? Or is the real
5:07barrier habit?
5:09Tell me in the comments. Now, let's talk
5:11about where EuroOffice actually came
5:13from. So, whose code did they start
5:15from?
5:16It's called OnlyOffice.
5:17If you haven't used it, OnlyOffice is an
5:19open source office suite developed by a
5:20company called Ascensio System. Its
5:22editors run beautifully in a browser,
5:24and it has built a reputation over the
5:26years for handling Microsoft's file
5:28formats with fewer formatting disasters
5:30than most competitors. That reputation
5:32is exactly why Nextcloud, IONOS, and
5:34their partners wanted it. They weren't
5:36looking for a project to admire. They
5:38were looking for a shortcut that
5:39actually works. And legally, they were
5:41allowed to take it.
5:43OnlyOffice publishes its code under the
5:45the
5:45Affero General Public License, version
5:473, the AGPL. That license says anyone
5:50can use, modify, and redistribute the
5:52software as long as they share their
5:54changes under the same terms.
5:56So, on March 27th, 2026, the coalition
5:59made a copy of the code. In open source,
6:02that's called a fork.
6:03Then they started building something new
6:05on top under European governance.
6:07Why fork instead of just contributing to
6:09OnlyOffice? The team's answer, posted on
6:11their GitHub page, was blunt. They
6:13called forking a last resort, and they
6:15claimed that outside contributions to
6:17OnlyOffice were impossible or heavily
6:19discouraged, and that the build
6:20instructions were unreliable and
6:22outdated. OnlyOffice disputes that. I'll
6:25get into that fight properly in a minute
6:26because it's the heart of this video.
6:28First, let's look at what you actually
6:30get.
6:31Your Office ships four applications: a
6:33document editor, a spreadsheet editor, a
6:35presentation editor, and a PDF editor.
6:37It works with DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX, and
6:41it also lists the Open Document Format,
6:43ODF, alongside them. That's the promise.
6:46Someone sends you a Word file, you open
6:47it, edit it, send it back, and nobody on
6:50the other end can tell you didn't use
6:51Microsoft. Here's the detail that
6:53surprised me when I dug into it. Your
6:55Office isn't really an app you download
6:57from a store. It's an editing engine
6:59designed to be embedded inside bigger
7:00platforms. Think of it as the office
7:02part of a larger collaboration system.
7:04The first big home for it is Nextcloud.
7:07When Nextcloud Hub 26 spring shipped on
7:10June 9th, Your Office was bundled in as
7:12an alternative to Collabora under the
7:13Nextcloud Office umbrella. Open a
7:15document in your organization's
7:16Nextcloud, and it opens in Your Office
7:19in your browser with colleagues editing
7:21alongside you. And it wasn't just a
7:22rename. Nextcloud's CEO, Frank
7:25Karlitschek, said the first job was
7:27cleaning up the code, shipping security
7:29updates, and integrating it with
7:30existing products.
7:32Nextcloud also lets its assistant add
7:34optional AI features to the editors, and
7:36Nextcloud's document conversion can use
7:38Your Office to convert between formats.
7:41In April, IONOS and Nextcloud started
7:43hiring a dedicated development team. And
7:45Karletsch told Computer World that
7:46Nextcloud, Proton, and IONOS each
7:49assigned a two-digit number of
7:50developers. Now, who's actually behind
7:52this? 12 organizations form the
7:54consortium. Nextcloud, the German
7:56platform that many European governments
7:58already trust for file sharing. IONOS,
8:00one of Europe's biggest cloud and
8:02hosting providers.
8:03Proton, the Swiss privacy company.
8:06Open-Xchange, the email and
8:07collaboration vendor Schleswig-Holstein
8:09picked for its mailboxes. And a long
8:11tail of smaller European players.
8:13Eurostat, XWiki, OpenProject, a billon,
8:16Bitaktik, Sovereign, office.eu, and
8:19Tuta, the encrypted email provider. That
8:21lineup tells you the strategy. This
8:23isn't one company shipping a product.
8:24It's a stack. Cloud from one partner,
8:27collaboration from another, email from
8:28another, and the editors in the middle.
8:30Each piece is replaceable, which matters
8:32when your goal is not depending on any
8:34single vendor. That's the sovereignty
8:35pitch in one sentence. Integrations with
8:38IONOS managed Nextcloud, Proton, and
8:40XWiki are expected by the end of 2026.
8:43Then came the missing piece. Since June,
8:45everything ran in the browser, and that
8:47was the number one complaint.
8:49On September 16th, Nextcloud Hub 26,
8:51Summer launched with a desktop client
8:53announced for Windows on x64 and arm64,
8:56Linux on x64 and arm64, and Macs with
8:59Apple Silicon. They can work with local
9:01files, fonts, and settings, save changes
9:03back to Nextcloud, and allow people on
9:05the desktop app and in the browser to
9:07edit the same document together.
9:09Nextcloud said the downloads would
9:10arrive in the coming weeks, and that
9:12this closes one of the last gaps with
9:13Microsoft Office. So, if you're planning
9:16to test it, check the project's GitHub
9:17for the current status before you build
9:19a pilot around it. But, not everyone
9:22cheered.
9:23The day before EuroOffice 1.0 launched,
9:25The Document Foundation, the nonprofit
9:27behind LibreOffice, published an open
9:29letter written by founding member Italo
9:31Vignoli.
9:32And it didn't hold back. It disputed the
9:34claim that EuroOffice is the first
9:36European open source office suite,
9:38pointing out that openoffice.org
9:40launched in 2001 and LibreOffice in
9:422010.
9:43Then, it made a sharper point. Euro
9:45Office defaults to Microsoft's OOXML
9:48formats. In their words, that's a format
9:50developed and controlled solely by
9:51Microsoft. How sovereign is a suite that
9:54still defaults to the other side's file
9:55format?
9:57A fair question. Karlaček acknowledged
9:59it, saying full ODF support is the
10:01priority for the next release. But,
10:03notice the irony.
10:04The whole reason Office 1 was that its
10:06formats became the standard. And
10:08Europe's first big attempt to replace it
10:10speaks that same format by default. So,
10:13I want your honest take. Is OOXML
10:15compatibility a smart, pragmatic bridge
10:17because nobody can switch if their files
10:19break? Or is it a trap that keeps Europe
10:22tied to Microsoft's rules? Drop your
10:24answer in the comments because I think
10:25this audience will split on it. And if
10:27this is useful, hit like and subscribe.
10:29The next part is where the story gets
10:31ugly because we still haven't answered
10:32the question in the title. Is it really
10:35free? Is it really free? Yes and no, and
10:37the difference matters. The software is
10:39free. Your Office's code is public on
10:41GitHub under the AGPL, so anyone can
10:44download it, run it, study it, and
10:45modify it without paying a license fee.
10:48Compare that with Microsoft 365, where
10:50you rent access and never see the code.
10:52But, free software doesn't mean free
10:54service. Your Office is designed to run
10:56inside platforms like Nextcloud, so
10:58somebody has to host it, secure it,
11:00update it, and fix it at 3:00 in the
11:01morning. That's either your own IT team
11:04or a provider like Ionos. Karlaček told
11:06Computer World back in the spring that
11:08pricing for a new product built on Euro
11:09Office wasn't confirmed yet. So, think
11:11of it this way. You're not paying for
11:13the software, you're paying for the
11:15service around it. And here's the big
11:16difference. If your provider gets too
11:18expensive, you can move to another one
11:20or run it yourself, and your documents
11:21come with you.
11:23Competition happens between service
11:25providers, not between locked-in
11:26products.
11:27That freedom, the freedom to take code
11:29and walk away, is exactly what the fight
11:31is about. Here's the story as I pieced
11:33it together from the blog posts on both
11:35sides.
11:36ONLYOFFICE's code is licensed under AGPL
11:38version 3. But since 2021, the source
11:41files have carried extra conditions
11:43added under section 7 of that license.
11:46Section 7 lets authors attach a limited
11:48set of supplementary terms. ONLYOFFICE
11:50used it to require that anyone
11:51distributing modified versions keep
11:53ONLYOFFICE's logo and attribution and to
11:56restrict the use of its trademarks. When
11:58the coalition forked the code, it
11:59removed that branding.
12:01Its argument was simple. A logo is a
12:03trademark matter and you can't force
12:04someone to keep it as a condition of
12:05using open source code. The reading of
12:07section 10 of the AGPL is that if a
12:10license adds a further restriction
12:12beyond what section 7 allows, any
12:14recipient is free to remove it. That's
12:16the whole dispute in one sentence.
12:18ONLYOFFICE's CEO, Lev Bannov, published
12:20his response on March 30th. He said
12:22EuroOffice had to either restore the
12:24branding and attributions or roll back
12:26all forks of the project. ONLYOFFICE's
12:28lawyers argued that the right to create
12:30derivative works comes solely from the
12:32license grant, which they call
12:33conditional and indivisible. In plain
12:35language, break one condition and you
12:38lose the whole license. Within days on
12:40April 1st, ONLYOFFICE suspended its
12:428-year partnership with Nextcloud.
12:44Nextcloud users who relied on ONLYOFFICE
12:46suddenly had to decide what to do next.
12:48So, who's right?
12:49Here's where it gets fascinating because
12:50the open source heavyweights piled in.
12:53The Free Software Foundation, the
12:54organization behind the GPL family of
12:56licenses, published a post essentially
12:58saying the AGPL is not a tool for taking
13:01freedom away. Bradley Kuhn of the
13:02Software Freedom Conservancy wrote a
13:04long piece calling ONLYOFFICE's approach
13:07badgeware, meaning software that lets
13:09you redistribute it but forces you to
13:11carry its advertising.
13:13Worth knowing, Kuhn disclosed that his
13:14organization runs a self-hosted
13:16Nextcloud instance, though it has no
13:18formal relationship with Nextcloud or
13:20IONOS. A Dutch lawyer, Moritz Westerik,
13:22reached a similar conclusion in an
13:24article he titled The Logo Trap. And
13:26Nextcloud's own post, published April
13:2722nd, kept the one condition it
13:29considers valid, a warranty disclaimer,
13:31and dropped the rest. But, let's be fair
13:33because one fact keeps getting lost.
13:36As of today, I found no court ruling
13:38anywhere. These are arguments from the
13:39FSF, from lawyers, and from the
13:42companies themselves. A judge hasn't
13:44spoken. And OnlyOffice has not backed
13:46down.
13:47Which brings me to the part I promised
13:49you.
13:50A big part of Your Office's argument for
13:52forking was OnlyOffice's origins. Your
13:54Office has said OnlyOffice is a Russian
13:57company despite attempts to hide that.
13:59OnlyOffice replies that its intellectual
14:01property has been held in Latvia since
14:032009. Its holding company is in
14:04Singapore, and its Russian operations
14:06were sold to local investors in 2019.
14:09The security site Cybernews decided to
14:11check the code itself. Its researchers
14:13found that Your Office shares thousands
14:15of code fingerprints with OnlyOffice.
14:17They counted around 370 changes imported
14:19from OnlyOffice developers into the
14:21server-side service, compared with
14:23roughly 20 made by Your Office's own
14:24developers. And they said changes tied
14:27to developers on Moscow time, made
14:29between December 2025 and March 2026,
14:32were pulled in by Nextcloud staff after
14:34the split. Now, I want to be careful
14:36here. That doesn't prove anything
14:37malicious. Importing upstream fixes is
14:40normal for a young fork. Your Office's
14:42developers say they're thoroughly
14:43reviewing the inherited code. But, it's
14:46a fair reminder that a European flag on
14:47the box doesn't automatically mean
14:49European code in the engine. And for a
14:51project whose whole pitch is trust, that
14:53matters.
14:54Because if one logo clause can terminate
14:56a license, every fork you've ever
14:58depended on gets shakier. So, here's my
15:00question. Should a company that built
15:02open-source software be allowed to
15:04demand its logo stay on every fork? Or
15:06does that kill the freedom that makes
15:08open source work? Tell me which side
15:10you're on.
15:11Next, the final part. Can Your Office
15:13actually compete with Microsoft? And
15:15what should you do about it? And that
15:17brings us to the biggest question of
15:18all. Even if Your Office survives the
15:21licensing dispute, can it actually
15:23compete with Microsoft Office in the
15:24real world? And more importantly, should
15:26you consider using it?
15:29Let's start with the competition.
15:30Microsoft has spent decades building an
15:32ecosystem that businesses depend on
15:34every single day. Word, Excel,
15:37PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and
15:39SharePoint work together in ways that
15:41are difficult to replicate overnight.
15:43Euro Office doesn't need to rebuild
15:44every one of those products to become
15:46useful, but it does need to prove that
15:48its document editing capabilities are
15:50reliable enough for real workloads.
15:52For everyday users, the gap may already
15:54be smaller than you think. For
15:56organizations running complicated Excel
15:57models, VBA macros, specialized add-ins,
16:00or heavily customized document
16:02templates, the difference can be much
16:04more significant. That's why the
16:05smartest approach isn't to switch
16:07everything immediately. It's to test the
16:09alternative against the work you
16:10actually do. And Europe already has a
16:12wider ecosystem to build on. LibreOffice
16:14offers a mature desktop office suite.
16:16Collabora Online provides browser-based
16:18document editing. Nextcloud offers file
16:21storage and collaboration, while
16:22European cloud providers can supply the
16:24infrastructure underneath these
16:25services.
16:26Euro Office could help connect these
16:28pieces into a more flexible alternative
16:30to the Microsoft ecosystem. But the
16:32biggest challenge isn't writing
16:33documents. It's earning trust over time.
16:36Organizations need predictable updates,
16:38security maintenance, dependable
16:39support, and confidence that the
16:41software will still be maintained
16:42several years from now. The unresolved
16:44licensing dispute adds another issue
16:46that potential adopters need to evaluate
16:48carefully.
16:49So, here's my recommendation. If you're
16:51an individual user, you don't need to
16:53wait for Euro Office to mature before
16:55exploring alternatives. If you're
16:56responsible for IT in a business or
16:58public institution, start with a
17:00controlled pilot. Test compatibility
17:02using real documents and calculate the
17:04full operating cost before committing.
17:07And if you're a developer, the project
17:09raises a bigger question about how open
17:11source communities can collaborate
17:12without losing the legal clarity that
17:14makes collaboration possible.
17:16Because ultimately, digital sovereignty
17:18isn't about replacing an American logo
17:19with a European one. It's about having
17:21genuine choices, being able to move your
17:23data, understanding the software you
17:25depend on, and avoiding unnecessary
17:27dependence on a single provider.
17:29So, can EuroOffice replace Microsoft
17:32Office? Not completely, not for
17:34everyone, and certainly not overnight.
17:36But, it could become another important
17:37building block in Europe's effort to
17:39create a more independent technology
17:40ecosystem.
17:42Now, I want to hear your opinion. Would
17:43you trust an open-source office suite
17:45for your everyday work, or are
17:47Microsoft's integrations and
17:48compatibility still too important to
17:50give up?
17:51Let me know in the comments.
17:52And if you want more deep dives into the
17:54technology decisions shaping our digital
17:56future, subscribe to the channel.
17:58Because the next big shift in technology
18:00might not be a brand new invention. It
18:02might be the moment people finally have
18:04a credible alternative to the software
18:05they've used for decades.

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