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Open Source

Open365 Is An Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Office 365 (open365.io) 144

Posted by msmash from the foss-news-of-the-day dept.
Martin Brinkmann, writing for Ghacks: Open365 is an open source Office 365 alternative that allows you to edit or create documents online, and to sync files with the cloud. The service is in beta currently but you can sign up for it already on the official website. You may use it using a web browser, download clients for Windows, Mac or Linux desktop machines, or for Android. An iOS client is in the making currently and will be made available as well soon. Open 365 offers two main features that you can make use of. First, it enables you to synchronize files between devices you use and the cloud. Second, it allows you to view, edit and create documents in the cloud using the technology provided by the Open Source Office suite LibreOffice Online for that.
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Open365 Is An Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Office 365

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  • I am not a cloud hater, there are some big advantages to the cloud. However for Office Tools I see no real benefit.
    Our Computers are fast enough to handle them (even low end devices). Besides Office Tools should be available in an offline mode anyways.
    Microsoft 360 offers no real benefit to the end user except for Microsoft so people keep paying for the service. Vs. Getting a copy and using it for as long as it will work on their systems.
    If you want cloud for your office tool. use Google Drive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hazem ( 472289 )

      However for Office Tools I see no real benefit.

      I generally agree with this - I really prefer to work offline and have my documents stored locally. However, in a couple of my classes, teams of students often use the online Google Docs. The main benefit here is that multiple people can synchronously edit the document. It's weird to watch, but it's particularly helpful during online meetings where we're working together on a document. The changes are made live and any of us can make the changes. Or when working on a presentation, we can all be working

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      I'm not promoting Office 365 or Google Docs but the advantages to a web based office suite seem pretty obvious to me. No software to install or update, accessible from anywhere with real time collaboration. But for the average user, I think the biggest thing is no more lost files to usual hard drive failure or virus. Buy a new computer? No problem, login to the website and there are all your files.

      I really wish there was a REAL, native, web-based alternative to Google and Microsoft.

  • We don't want web UIs! We want native apps! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @12:40PM (#51990003)

    If there's one thing that should be clear by now, it's that normal users and advanced users don't want to use web-based UIs! They always give an inferior experience to native apps, regardless of the platform.

    Most of mobile's success is because of native apps, not because of web apps. And the native apps that have been implemented as wrappers around locally-running web apps have generally been disliked by users.

    People don't use services like GMail or Google Docs or Office 365 or Dropbox or Facebook because of the web UIs. They use them in spite of the web UIs! They want the unlimited email storage, or the ease of sharing files, or the ease of sharing private/personal info with advertisers.

    This is where the web technology advocates really strike out. Users don't use web apps because they want to; they use them because they want the back-end service, and there's often not a native client provided. When native clients are provided, we typically see users opting to use them instead of the shitty web front ends.

    • Re:We don't want web UIs! We want native apps! (Score:5, Informative)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @12:47PM (#51990065)

      Just as long as the Web UI loads fast and is easy to use most people are OK with it.
      Microsoft in general sucks major in making Web Apps, they just don't get it. I actually prefer gmail myself and don't bother with a mail client app.

      However if the application doesn't need internet connection we don't necessarily need a web app for it.

    • Re:We don't want web UIs! We want native apps! (Score:5, Funny)

      by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @12:50PM (#51990097)

      Says the guy posting to a web discussion site.

    • There is some truth in what you say here. And there are very valid points. If I had points I'd give you at least one. But for a admin perspective this has advantages. It might be interesting if the fonts you mentioned became more standardized on the web. I can see people (like me) trying this out. I tell people to avoid google docs in business (and office 360 even more so, did the math, $120/year, WAY more expensive than purchasing after 3 years, which if you have to upgrade/replace you have to explain your

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      The problem you're describing is solved by the Windows Phone. That's why I use one.

    • If there's one thing that should be clear by now, it's that normal users and advanced users don't want to use web-based UIs! They always give an inferior experience to native apps, regardless of the platform.

      Most people want more then one tool in the toolbox. Native apps are not the best for distributed use. Personally, I want a choice.

      People don't use services like GMail or Google Docs or Office 365 or Dropbox or Facebook because of the web UIs. They use them in spite of the web UIs! They want the unlimited email storage, or the ease of sharing files, or the ease of sharing private/personal info with advertisers.

      You know that Google allows you to use almost all of it's services with whatever app you choose? I have two gmail accounts and I use Thunderbird. This allowing of user choice is one reason they do so well. (Even if they did totally screw up imap...)

      This is where the web technology advocates really strike out. Users don't use web apps because they want to; they use them because they want the back-end service, and there's often not a native client provided. When native clients are provided, we typically see users opting to use them instead of the shitty web front ends.

      And these guys offer a native client as well. But when you want several people working on the same document, it has to be non-l

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SQLGuru ( 980662 )

        Actually, Google *doesn't* allow you to use any service on any platform you want. They've actively blocked efforts to make some of those services be available on Windows Phone......in spite of allowing the exact same technique be used on another platform (YouTube....WP vs iOS).

        • Actually, Google *doesn't* allow you to use any service on any platform you want.

          Never said platform... The fact that your phone does not run the things needed for Youtube is not google's problem. But you can watch youtube videos with more then just the google web page. And you can use many different programs for gmail, or google voice, or google maps, or ... You get the point.

      • And these guys offer a native client as well. But when you want several people working on the same document, it has to be non-local for someone.

        The document does, but not the application. Not to mention, there's no inherent reason a "cloud" should be required: you could have a direct connection between the clients instead.

        • Most of the people I share documents with are not in the building. If they were I would walk over and look at it on one screen.

          • What does that have to do with anything? By "direct connection" I mean peer-to-peer over the Internet -- you know, without a "cloud service" middleman. I don't mean literally direct as in on the same network segment without so much as a hub between.

            • Really? That really only works if people have static IPs and never move around. Otherwise you will still need some software or service that everyone connects to to keep track of who is who which kind of negates the whole peer to peer thing. You will need at least your OWN server. The point of the cloud is to move maintenance and upgrade costs into subscription costs which are easier to budget for. You don't need to worry about your server crashing and not having a backup or waiting for a restore, or wo

        • No cloud is required - MS office collaborative editing also works via any SharePoint server. In fact think it was available on-premise before cloud.

          Also, the technology it is based on originally _was_ peer-to-peer - look up Groove and Ray Ozzie.
          Groove was actually really good, MS have unfortunately made it a lot worse since.

    • So, the native clients mentioned in the summary should be the killer app then?

      Or, do you think they're using non-standard terminology there?

      Took a look at the site to try and figure that out but didn't really see an answer...

    • you are a weirdo, it's clear most people use web services and like them

    • People don't use services like GMail or... because of the web UIs. They use them in spite of the web UIs!

      There are an unlimited number of native POP/IMAP email clients that you can use for gmail. Which one do you personally use? Or is your argument limited to mobile or touch devices only? If you're talking about checking email on your phone or tablet, then yes, I totally agree with you. Native apps are so much better on mobile devices.

      That being said, if your argument is about using gmail on desktops or laptops, I have to wonder why you're not using a native client on those. Or are you?

    • Gmail and Dropbox have web UIs? I use Gmail over IMAP/SMTP and Dropbox over its native service. Hell, even my Google Docs use is pretty much entirely by means of the Android app. Web UIs are for when a native implementation is not feasible, such as when you want to access you mail from a computer you don't control. Otherwise they're usually so inferior that they don't compare.

    • Office 365 (Score:4, Informative)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @02:15PM (#51990729)

      People don't use services like GMail or Google Docs or Office 365 or Dropbox or Facebook because of the web UIs.

      Just to be clear on this, Office 365 is the full standard aka "professional" suite of MS Office apps, including Outlook, locally resident, sold as a subscription service. The web component is there, but still secondary.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      People don't use services like GMail or Google Docs or Office 365 or Dropbox or Facebook because of the web UIs.

      Actually, Office365 isn't a web UI. Microsoft gives users native Office - you can install full Office on up to I think 2 PCs at the basic level (Windows or Mac), one tablet and one smartphone. These are native office apps running locally. You can also use the web UI if you want to quickly edit something without syncing it, opening Word/Excel/etc and then syncing it back.

      And the office that is a p

    • Office 365 is great. It's good to see OSS try something similar. With O365 you get the ability to use BOTH local and web based apps. With office 365 you can use the web AND outlook to access email. You can install local versions of office AND use web based versions if you are not at YOUR computer. Now this depends on the package you sign up for but is an option. Also you get free upgrades and Non-profits get email for FREE. It's really a good deal for a lot of companies. It really gets rid of a lot
  • Seems like this is a closer equivalent to that than Office 365....

  • Office runs natively inside the browser, without the hassle to download custom software. Open365 requires a custom client to download.

    My guess is they integrated libreoffice into NPAPI or PepperAPI and then ship the whole thing as the client together with a browser. That's not an 100% replacement of office 365 where you don't have to download custom blobs you have to fully trust. Office 365 is at least confined to the browser sandbox. And yes its all open source so at least you can audit it, but that doesn'

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm running LibreOffice Writer in my browser (Chrome on a Debian 8 workstation) right now, served up from the Open365 beta app (just signed up), and I have not installed the (optional) native client. Did you make a bunch of bold assertions without any actual experience regarding the target of your assertions? -PCP

      • I haven't tried it myself just had read through its (rather small) website. And I saw download links for client software. So I assumed you would require this to access the private cloud. Seems I was wrong. Thanks for correcting!

  • I'm reading things like "no real benefit" but in terms of maintenance the benefit is HUGE. Yes we could all install libreoffice and dozens (or hundreds) of workstations but it's a PAIN to upgrade when new versions pass testing. This is much better from a computer/network administrator's point of view. I had been looking to in other solutions with a similar approach, but looks like it could be more straight forward. As for Office 360, do we REALLY want to be sending private data to MS. I prefer this. I alre
    • It's not a pain to upgrade when you use patch management software like Ninite Pro. (unfortunately it isn't free, but it's not super duper expensive either) Don't forget also, that a lot of countries have data residency laws.. so depending on what kind of data your employees are working on, it may be illegal to use a cloud-based solution if it is hosted outside the country/trade block.

      • Don't forget also, that a lot of countries have data residency laws.. so depending on what kind of data your employees are working on, it may be illegal to use a cloud-based solution if it is hosted outside the country/trade block.

        Fortunately they already thought of this.

        Open365 is 100% open source. You can download it and deploy to your own servers or use it online for free.

  • Office365 Haiku (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @12:54PM (#51990113) Homepage Journal

    Thin clients are back
    But your browser is bloated
    How does it fit?

  • Odd 365 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Most companies I've seen going to Office 365 are primarily for Outlook with the bonus of removing the horror that is administering Exchange on-prem. Editing Word docs from a browser is a nice to have, albeit sometimes it relapses into a training issue, e.g. teaching mom where her document went.

  • Software as a Service avoids open source benefits (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:09PM (#51990215)

    The Free software foundation has written a recommended piece as to why you should avoid software as a service and that "open source" software as a service in no way protects users freedom or privacy. Online services should only be used when you want to share information with others. When you are working on data for your own use, their is no point in using software as a service, you give up rights when you do so.

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html

    • There are some things that we do that we just don't care. The convenience is more important than other factors such as privacy and free software principles. I can give a personal example: I run paper and dice roleplaying games that I sync character sheets, images and other data to my players. I don't give a rat's ass who can scan them or if some service decides to go out of existence suddenly. None of the data is vital or in need of data security. If they disappear overnight, it's annoying but, I can

      • ...sync character sheets, images and other data to my players.

        That would be the part where GP wrote that "[o]nline services should only be used when you want to share information with others."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dickens ( 31040 )

      Of course there is a point. The benefits of having location independence and "cloud" storage are the same whether the software is open source or not, or whether I share the information with others or not.

      • Of course there is a point. The benefits of having location independence and "cloud" storage are the same whether the software is open source or not, or whether I share the information with others or not.

        To give an example, I'm working on a story using Google Docs as my primary word processor. Yes, I could use LibreOffice - and if I had it as a local file that would be my preference - but Google Docs means I can edit it from my browser, leave the house, and then edit it more with my phone. If I'm waiting

        • Or you could host a free software editing system somewhere trustworthy (that's not Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and others) and have the same minor conveniences without feeding a system built to destroy your family privacy.

          There's nothing about your use case that justifies the need for this kind of hosting anyhow, as everything you describe doing could be done with hosting an ODF file on a file server you control. One hopes your family values privacy more than either convenience or bolstering the b

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xvan ( 2935999 )

      Online services should only be used when you want to share information with others.

      Like collaborative documents when you don't want /can trust/pay google/microsoft ?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ...it's running like a dog. I wonder if it's a good old fashioned slashdotting. Haven't seen one of them a round here for some time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gosand ( 234100 )

      Same here... I signed up, but things started crawling. Was able to upload a doc via the mobile app, then tried to share a link to it. It couldn't send an email, said to contact my administrator. So I went into the email client, it really started dragging. Started to compose an email to see if it would send.... and got "You are experiencing unsteady internet connectivity. Please check your network access." There is nothing wrong with MY access, I think their site is struggling because now I can't conne

  • Dear developers: Please ensure your site is functional in browsers other than Chrome.
    I first noticed the odd animation on https://open365.io/ [open365.io] on Pale Moon, so I checked it in all the browsers I have installed.

    Chrome shows it as it's intended (I assume)
    Pale Moon shows the animation but it's not as smooth as in Chrome
    Mozilla shows it as a herky jerky mess that eats up your CPU
    IE (11, latest version on Windows 7) doesn't even render the background properly

    I wouldn't dare to load it up in the pre-4.4 Android b

  • 5 terrabytes of cloud storage (Score:4, Informative)

    by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:27PM (#51990373)

    What sold me on Office365 is that for the $99/year I get 5 terrabytes of cloud storage in OneDrive - 1 terabyte each for me and 4 others.

    It's enough for me to keep all my photos over the decades, my 200GB music collection, and for the past five years I've been "taping" some internet radio stations 24/7 and keep them online too.

    Very happy camper.

    • Happy until... (Score:3, Informative)

      by freeze128 ( 544774 )
      until you stop paying for it, and all your files are lost to you.

    • Re:5 terrabytes of cloud storage (Score:5, Interesting)

      by somenickname ( 1270442 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @03:27PM (#51991221)

      They are no longer your photos, music, etc. Now they belong to Microsoft and they can revoke your ability to use them whenever they want and for whatever reason they want. "The cloud" is not a long term storage medium.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        They are no longer your photos, music, etc. Now they belong to Microsoft and they can revoke your ability to use them whenever they want and for whatever reason they want. "The cloud" is not a long term storage medium.

        Maybe not, but it's proven more reliable than the software RAID1 hard disk plus external hard drive that I was using on my OpenSUSE basement server previously. That server sort of ground to a halt, maybe because of a fan issue. I recovered data off one of the disks, took more backups, bought a new server, and that one worked fine for two years until it too failed. This time I wasn't able to recover a large chunk of my taped radio material. I tried switching to Windows for my server, hoping its "Storage Spac

        • You might want to consider something like a Synology and use the cloud storage as part of your backup plan. They are simple, low maintenance devices that have a good reputation for reliability. It sounds like you have properly irreplaceable data and, personally, I wouldn't trust a third party to be the sole owner of that data.

        • I first used started using hard disks around 1990, and have come to the complete certainty that every hard disk I use will fail.

          It took you this long to figure it out? Way back in the old days, they were selling tape backup systems for 40-meg hard disks. Because it's never been of question of if they will fail, but when. Same as any other multi-part mechanical device.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

            It took you this long to figure it out?

            I figured it out in 1995, started trying RAID as my solution in 2005, and by 2010 I'd come to the realization that I myself would never do as good a job as a cloud storage vendor.

            • Fair enough. People don't seem to realize that as HD disks grow, the probability of a second failure during a restore increases.
            • Kind of reminds me of a former boss. His 6-disk raid failed. I asked him why he didn't replace the failed drive and do a restore. Turns out he figured that there was not that much chance of a second drive failure, so he ran it for months. 6 tb of his favorite pr0n gone. :-)

              • RAID is only as reliable as the person administering it. I keep a fairly large (well, large for home use) RAID array and every disk runs SMART tests daily. If a disk fails a self test, within hours, I drop it from the array, let the hot spare pick up the data, and replace the dropped disk with a cold spare (that becomes the new hot spare) and then order a new cold spare. It doesn't matter if the disk that failed the self test could be salvaged. It's going to die at some point so, if it shows any signs o

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by jon3k ( 691256 )
                  Where do you keep your offsite backups in case of filesystem corruption, accidental rm -rf or your house burning down?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jon3k ( 691256 )
        What are you talking about? You can back them all up to local physical copies (which I encourage you to do) using their sync client. How are they going to "revoke my ability" to use my photos? What does that even mean?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Until your ISP caps your IP traffic so you can only access a fraction of that 1 TB per month.

  • I do some tech work for a nonprofit. We're Office365, but there are a few documents better kept in-house. I've been looking for a self-hosted collaborative spreadsheet, preferably browser based, but nothing I've tried has materialized correctly...

    FengOffice - doesn't support spreadsheets natively. The hackneyed workaround that does, only supports it in a particular, dated version of FengOffice, and after creating the document, the web app prompts to download the spreadsheet rather than edit it.
    OnlyOffice - eight cores and 8GB of RAM for this VM, and it takes over a minute to load any document.
    ZKSpreadsheet Server - From the hand of Johnny Ives himself comes the most beautiful spreadsheet software ever written. It's fast, it's easy to use, it's effective, it's simple to install, it's resource efficient...and it's $4,000.

    So, if Open365 gets its self-hosted option off the ground, I would love nothing more than for this to solve my problem.

    • Q: Are the spreadheets for actual financial data, or just for lists of things?

      If they are for lists of things, then maybe the nonprofit could host a wiki that has good support for tables.

      • Q: Are the spreadheets for actual financial data, or just for lists of things?

        If they are for lists of things, then maybe the nonprofit could host a wiki that has good support for tables.

        I've been looking at a few possibilities. The challenge with a Wiki is that the folks who need to edit it are not exactly the kind of folk who will take kindly to having to add HTML markup to what they're making. Also, a few of the documents we're eyeballing will end up being helped out a lot by formulas, so a Wiki would only be 'partially helpful' here.

        • ...not exactly the kind of folk who will take kindly to having to add HTML markup...

          Right. In that case, choose a wiki that has WYSIWYG editing. I also recommend choosing one that can export the page to various formats. Two possibilities are MediaWiki and Trac. You may find others in the list on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Collaborative being a key word, I didn't get the impression that Open365 allows google docs style concurrent collaborative editing. EtherCalc should work, but is of course limited in features: https://ethercalc.net/ [ethercalc.net]

      • Collaborative being a key word, I didn't get the impression that Open365 allows google docs style concurrent collaborative editing. EtherCalc should work, but is of course limited in features: https://ethercalc.net/ [ethercalc.net]

        Ethercalc may fit the bill...but dear Lord is it ugly! Form over function is one thing, but were they explicitly attempting to evoke 80's nostalgia?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by paugq ( 443696 )

      Have you tried Zoho Docs? It's like a native application, both in features and performance

      • Have you tried Zoho Docs? It's like a native application, both in features and performance

        No self-hosted option that I saw, though I do seem to remember that a self-hosted version was available at one point. If it's not self-hosted, it offers little benefit to simply using O365.

  • is it eyeOS owned? (Score:3)

    by 4wdloop ( 1031398 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @04:17PM (#51991557)

    The bottom of open365.io page has:
    © eyeOS 2016.

    What is the license than?

  • Office365 BLOWS! (Score:4, Informative)

    by gabrieltss ( 64078 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @06:35PM (#51992551)

    We use O365 at work and it sucks big green donkey dicks! Yeah I want to wait 30+ seconds to open a Microsoft document (word doc, excel, powerpoint). And it CONSTANYLY loses connectivity and you have to keep logging into it. What a POS!

  • Somebody needs to pay for these servers, so what's the business model? In those details is the likely answer as to whether or not this is a good idea.

  • I absolutely LOVE my Microsoft subscription-based access to my own (Copyrighted at their moment of creation) documents! I love it. I can never live without Microsoft Office Products!

    Or maybe, perhaps I am suffering from Stockholm Syndrome [wikipedia.org].

  • erm, because using an program err app err web app totally needs an account! And you need the account even before the app launched, because well .. just create it, okay?

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