A welcome commitment to open standards — and why it should end with ODF as Euro-Office’s native document format.
The Euro-Office pre-announcement has generated considerable coverage across the European press over the past few days. The Document Foundation welcomes the attention that open standards are receiving — and welcomes still more the commitment the announcement makes to them. Before the discussion settles, we would like to clarify one point and state one expectation.
Several reports have described Euro-Office as “the first European open source office suite.” Reading the pre-announcement carefully, we do not find the coalition making that claim, and it is not one we would endorse. Europe has been building free and open source office software for many years: LibreOffice, developed by this Foundation and a worldwide community, is itself European, mature, and far from alone.
The “first” framing appears to have emerged in the speed of a launch day rather than in the text of the announcement. We note it not to claim precedence — precedence is not the point — but because accuracy serves the cause of open standards better than enthusiasm alone.
Read on its merits, the announcement gives a great deal to welcome. The promise to improve support for the OpenDocument Format is precisely what the European free software community has long asked for, and we take it in good faith and with genuine appreciation. We have always held that sovereignty begins with the format, not with the logo on the application — and a coalition that understands this is one worth encouraging.
We would also state an expectation, in the spirit of encouragement rather than demand. Improved support is a beginning, not a destination. A format that is merely supported is one a suite can read and write as a courtesy, while a native format is the one in which its documents are created, stored, and trusted across the years — and that is precisely where digital sovereignty is won or lost.
The only destination consistent with the sovereignty Euro-Office invokes is ODF as its native document format. A genuinely European, genuinely sovereign office suite cannot treat the open standard as a concession to outsiders, it has to speak ODF as its mother tongue. The Document Foundation looks forward to that moment, and will be glad to acknowledge it when it comes.