I’ve been testing it and it seems like a good solution for general productivity and a great option for people migrating from MS. It’s open source and cross-platform, but I just don’t see it in any conversations about office software.
For me, it’s so far leagues beyond LibreOffice. I really need something that works on my phone and syncs across devices, and allows collaboration. OnlyOffice seems to fit the bill. It’s also far more intuitive to my preferences.
I am sure that some people wouldn’t like the fact that the interface runs as a webapp, or use of Java, but it’s strange to me that it’s not usually even in the conversation.
Back in 2020, those of us who had been using the community document server were greeted with a notification stating that mobile editing was no longer supported and that we’d have to buy their commercial product.
Some folks quickly figured out a patch. Others, like myself, left with a bad taste in our mouths.
In the end, I can only speak for myself, but I chose LibreOffice and The Document Foundation for philosophical reasons.
https://github.com/nextcloud/documentserver_community/issues/94
Thanks, this is really helpful in understanding the history of the community.
I use it, and it works fine. OpenOffice had a massive following before the LibreOffice fork so realistically most people moved there as a default option. Doesn’t mean Only office is bad, just that many FOSS users are more likely to use its competitors.
I am sure that some people wouldn’t like the fact that the interface runs as a webapp, or use of Java, but it’s strange to me that it’s not usually even in the conversation.
A point about conversations, rather than the software itself. I think it’s not really at the forefront of the discussion because this kind of software caters kinda to “legacy” organizational environments that want a 1 to 1 replacement for Google Docs or Microsoft 365, which is not the sexiest problem. In the community of adopters of NextCloud (poor souls…) the discussion between onlyoffice and collabora, together with their integration with NC, is a quite common topic but again, most of these deal with orgs and not individual adoption and I would say that’s a very distinct crowd from most “hackerinos” who populate the FOSS online communities.
That said, a lot of the discourse is now focused on moving away entirely from document-based (and even document-oriented) software, because there’s a shared understanding that the problem is in the approach itself, and what IBM, Apple and Microsoft considered a reasonable way to handle information in the '80s, is not necessarily the best way now.
Can you expand on your last point? Where do we move to from document based software? That seems like a bigger change than the change from typewriter to word processor.
Well, Obsidian, Notion, Anytype, Affine can give you a hint of possible directions in this transition. While they still retain document-oriented features, like the concept of Page, they also try to really go for a much richer experience that does away with the limitations inherited from paper-based solutions. Double-linking, composability, fractal properties of pages and nesting (especially in Notion and Anytype), block-based UI, seamless integration of text, databases, and embeds, heavy use of transclusion and other stuff like that.
I would say this alternative system is far from cohesive and mature, but it’s clear some software is emancipating itself from whatever Onlyoffice represents.
Maybe you would find this video interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXiQlLHuK7g
It’s developed by a Russian owned company (Ascensio System SIA).
My hot take: of it’s open source and they don’t receive money from me, I don’t really care.
Until you work with anything that might be of interest to Russian services (Ukrainian refugees in EU in my case).
Or you work in a field where national security is of any concern.
the app version also has facebook & google trackers embedded into it:
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.onlyoffice.documents/latest/#trackers
This is a moot point for me, same as “It’s developed by China!”
Remove networking permissions from the Flatpak, run it in Firejail, hell, could even put it into a container if you really wanted to be sure.That’s very interesting. There’s a widespread boycott of any product with Israeli ties due to what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza, yet what Russia is doing is even more clear cut but this doesn’t register as a problem for most people here.
How is it more clear cut? What Israel is doing involves genocide, forceful expulsions, colonization and annexation. Gazans haven’t had running water or electricity for over a year now.
You couldn’t get more “clear cut” than what Israel is doing. It’s also a matter of degree. Invading another country is bad, but it is not a holocaust.
Besides, boycotting Russian products makes no sense in the West given that they are already sanctioned to hell. You’d have to go out of your way to send them money.
Tankies gonna tankie.
they’re trying harder to hide that now. as of last year, a sg-based holding company owns a uk-based company which owns the original developer, the software, and numerous regional branch offices.
kinda sucks, because it is a nice program. doesn’t have feature parity with microsoft office, but it’s got pretty much everything that most users need or would want. it’s also horribly slow on lower-spec hardware.
so what? europe stirp sanctions from russian oligarchs and also make money by taking gap in sanctions on oil, gas and mineral resources sucking them from russia sponsoring war
Comments like this are interesting because the upvote ratio tells me that 3/30 lemmy accounts are surely Russia controlled 🤘
If your expert analysis of voting ratios has led you to conclude that I’m Russian, you might want to go back on your methodology and rethink it. Check my post history and really give it a thought haha.
Lol soz I meant that the people down voting were Russian
Wait, is it a web app or does it use Java? Those are two distinctly different technologies.
I don’t really know anything about computers, and it seems like I’m not the only one who finds the entire app suite a little confusing. The Github says this, which is where I got the understanding that it involves both:
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors contain the following components:
- desktop-apps - the frontend for ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors which is used to build the program interface for the operating system selected.
- desktop-sdk - SDK which is a core part of ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors.
- core - server core components for ONLYOFFICE Document Server which is a part of ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors and is used to enable the conversion between the most popular office document formats (DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, PDF, HTML, EPUB, XPS, DjVu, XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, PPT, PPTX, ODP).
- sdkjs - JavaScript SDK for the ONLYOFFICE Document Server which is a part of ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors and contains API for all the included components client-side interaction.
- web-apps - the frontend for ONLYOFFICE Document Server which is a part of ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors that allows the user to create, edit, save and export text, spreadsheet and presentation documents using the common interface of a document editor.
- dictionaries - the dictionaries of various languages used for spellchecking in ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors.
Hopefully you can explain what that means.
Ah, I think it uses JavaScript, not Java, so yeah it looks like it is a web app.
It’s quite impressive IMO that you are into open-source software even though you say you don’t know anything about computers, I’d say that counts as something, plus you know about Lemmy too. We all love open-source software here :)
Well, “nothing” may be a slight exaggeration. But I know little enough that wasn’t aware Java and JavaScript are two different things.
Open source requires SOME understanding of computers, but really, you don’t have to understand economic theory to see the benefits of joining a union. I don’t know much, but I value privacy and I am old enough to see how tragically profiteers have broken the web. People smarter than me assure me that Open Source tends to be more secure, more private, harder to abuse and that all seems like a good idea to me. I’ve helped out with lots of Community contribution projects like Wikipedia, Open Street Maps, Open Clip Art, etc. and I see the good that Creative commons does, which is a philosophical cousin of Open Source. So, yeah, I understand Open source insofar as I understand its importance, even though I really don’t know enough to contribute much other than cheerleading :)
