LibreOffice slams rival Euro-Office as a 'de facto ally' of Microsoft lock-in
as concerns over possible Russian interference rise

Date:
Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:05:00 +0000

Description:
LibreOffice slates Euro-Office for using Microsoft's proprietary OOXML
format, as reports reveal its Russian dependency.

FULL STORY
The Document Foundation -- the organization behind LibreOffice -- has
publicly criticized Euro-Office over concerns that it does not genuinely promote European digital sovereignty despite its marketing as a viable European alternative to the likes of Microsoft Office.

LibreOffice described Euro-Office as a "freeware clone" of its Big Tech
rival, claiming its strategy is to mimic Microsoft's interface and workflows. Conversely, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice "are two genuine open-source
office suites, built from source code that originated in Europe," founding member Italo Vignoli wrote in an open letter. In the
letter, Vignoli slated Microsoft's "horrible proprietary OOXML format," acknowledging the format's use in preventing sovereignty efforts by
supporting vendor lock-in. An understandable strategy by a tech vendor that, historically at least, hasn't actively supported sovereignty efforts over clear desires to grow the business.

However, while that much is understandable, Vignoli questions why
"Euro-Office defaults to the fully proprietary OOXML document format,"
arguing it simply reinforces Microsoft's ecosystem and creates a long-term dependency on the company's products.

The original announcement described Euro-Office as a "sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office" with an "intuitive interface" and "strong compatibility." The familiar interface is believed to be intentional, to make migration easier.

European tech firms like IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian and BTactic are behind the initiative.

Security concerns -- Another sovereignty concern is
Euro-Office's potential if not slightly disconnected ties to Russia. Euro-Office is actually based on an existing project called OnlyOffice,
having only recently parted ways from that project in March 2026.

Cybernews has revealed up to 99% of the codebase can be traced back to developers working in Russian time zones with only a small proportion of contributions come from the European consortium itself.

Additionally, it appears that the new sovereign project continues to merge selected code changes from the upstream project, indicating it's still
reliant on Russian software developers.

With this in mind, users could have concerns over vulnerabilities, malicious code insertion and broader dependency risks that totally negate the sovereign effort in the first place.

Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/libreoffice-slams-rival-euro-office-as-a-de-fact o-ally-of-microsoft-lock-in-as-concerns-over-possible-russian-interference-ris e

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