I had no idea there was so much drama behind MS Office alternatives. I moved to Libre some time ago and although it is often buggy and frustrating, I know it well enough to make it do the job. It’s also had a ribbon UI for some time, so I’m not sure what the press release is talking about there.
What’s wrong with LibreOffice?
Many complain about bad UX, if nextcloud is going through this amount of effort to make a fork, then those people have a point
Just to clarify, NextCloud aren’t forking LibreOffice, they’re forking OnlyOffice. They’re two very different projects (OnlyOffice is a web based office suite, whereas LibreOffice is primarily desktop based, although there is work on making a web version)
There’s apparently been a fallout between ColabraOffice and LibreOffice, which is why LibreOffice is now building a web version.
“European sovereignty!!!” Hosts it on Github.
🤦
Perfection is the enemy of progress
It’s also not that hard to host on Codeberg… especially if they’re already doing something disruptive like forking…
I would say that poor foundational choices are also the enemy of progress too.
Fortunately, migrating off Github to something like Codeberg is quite easy (or so I’ve heard).
But I do wonder what it bodes for other choices they’re making.
From a source code perspective, moving is as easy as pushing it to another platform. Everything uses git under the hood.
However, all the project mgmt stuff like issues and PRs and releases aren’t as easy
Its not “easy” but its not that difficult either, I’ve overseen a migration from a gitea instance to github (coporate policy, not my choice) that had information that needed to be retained for regulatory purposes. it took a bit of work, but only a single engineer working on it on and off around other tasks for a few weeks including testing and dry runs.
Yeah I know gitea has a mature api and I suspect it’s GitHub compatible. So any mid level dev should smash it out. Especially now with a little help from a magic pattern machine.
It makes me feel like when people insist it would take an astronomical amount of effort to move their community off of discord.
I know it will but you are worse than wasting your time putting that decision off because it will limit your community in ways you cannot even perceive yet.
Stop wasting everyone’s time, don’t build houses on top of destabilized sinking mud and expect people to move in, and if they do now you have a MUCH bigger problem on your hands than the challenge of building a new building since you have to convince people the old building which looks fine is not safe.
Not even doing the bare minimum is also the enemy of progress.
sovereignty != isolation
Microsoft sucks, but what exactly is the threat you’re trying to mitigate by not putting their Office suite on GH? Microsoft deciding to disappear it or take control of it one day? MS does a ton of business in Europe, so they have a lot more to risk than PR history for tools that the devs would all still have on their machines (and thus could migrate at any time to another code repo).
There’s not a readily-available European alternative to Github, and no, Codeberg is not one, because the value of GH is not just hosting code, it’s being a well-known place to find code. If you want a “European alternative” to GH, you’d first need to create an internationally-famous, known-by-all-developers platform. But that’s not “in scope” for their EU-Office tool.
sovereignty != isolation
Codeberg != isolationThere’s not a readily-available European alternative to Github, and no, Codeberg is not one, because the value of GH is not just hosting code, it’s being a well-known place to find code.
Codeberg is absolutely an alternative hosting place that is ready to go today. Medium and large players like Zig, Guix, Librewolf, Forgejo, and Comaps are on Codeberg. These aren’t random people with projects that no one uses. These are large projects with lots of collaborators that ship software to lots of people. (Even Alpine Linux seems to be experimenting with Codeberg.)
Codeberg has a similar UI/UX to GitHub. It’s got CI too, either traditional CI with Woodpecker, or you can migrate your GitHub Actions to Forgejo Actions (which are similar).
Codeberg is big and popular enough that it shows up in web search results, search for “zig source code” and you’ll get a result for Codeberg. It’s not like people only search for code in the GitHub search bar.
I like the spirit but let’s be honest, none of the examples you cited in your first paragraph are “large”.
Codeberg != isolation
I wasn’t saying that codeberg was isolation, I’m saying that you don’t have to extract yourself from all non-European tools and dependencies in order to maintain sovereignty.
Codeberg is big and popular enough that it shows up in web search results
Not from what I can see.
search for “zig source code”
Sure, if you search for something you are explicitly aware is on Codeberg, you’ll find… links to Codeberg.
But if you search for “source code repositories”, “where to find open source software”, “where to find source code for software”, you get #1 Github, then Sourceforge, then other random ones like Google Code Repos.
Even from the projects you listed, I’ve only heard of Forgejo (and that’s only because I was explicitly searching for self-hosted code repo software), and Librewolf (Alpine is on their own Gitlab instance). Also, listing the software that the website itself is built on as evidence of big projects hosting there is a little obama-giving-himself-a-medal-meme-y.
I’m not saying Codeberg is bad, or that people shouldn’t use it, but it’s not well-known and is not something to shame people for not using.
I find code on codeberg all the time. Skill issue if you can’t.
Of course there’s no readily available european alternative to github, if you exclude the most obvious readily available european alternative to github.
I find code on codeberg all the time.
You won’t find codeberg unless you search for it or a repo that lives on it explicitly.
Search in Google, DDG, Kagi, or whatever search engine you like for some generic variant of “where to find source code/ foss tools/ etc”, and show me the combo that returns you Codeberg.
Unlike Github, which is
a well-known place to find code
Codeberg is not, and most people have not heard of it, and won’t find it organically.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=foot+terminal+source
Very first result is codeberg
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=zig+lang+source
First result is the official website, second is github because they migrated very recently (links to codeberg) third is codeberg.
Yes, skill issue. You are complaining that you search for “where to find source code” and complaining that the vapid useless SEO-optimized articles that you find do not mention codeberg? Your search query sucks. Search for
<tool> source codeor similar instead.You’re not showing that they were wrong. You’re showing what they already said.
Yeah but what they said is meaningless. Searching for
<tool> source codeis how you would search for tool’s source code. Not “where to find source code”
unless you search for it or a repo that lives on it explicitly
Skill issue indeed. Reading comprehension, specifically.
Let me spell it out:
- You won’t find Codeberg in searches unless you know it exists already, or already know of a specific tool that is hosted there.
- Euro-Office creators probably want people to discover their tool as much as possible.
- Hosting the tool on a platform that doesn’t come up in searches due to its relative obscurity is therefore a bad idea.
- Euro-Office creators chose not to do that.
the vapid useless SEO-optimized articles that you find
“This year will be the year of
the Linux desktopCodeberg!”I don’t need to know that foot is hosted on codeberg. Searching for its source code reveals that it’s hosted there.
I do not need to know that euro office is hosted on github, searching for its source code reveals that it’s hosted there.
If you search on github itself that is your fault. If the goal is digital sovereignty for europe, hosting code on an american-owned forge when a perfectly viable european one exists is idiotic.
foot… Searching for it
euro office… searching for it
Whether you like the SEO-driving search engine providers or not, they are still the way that most people find things on the internet, and they prioritize Github results. When you’re not searching for “it”, but just searching them by describing things like it, (of which there are many, mostly on Github), it serves your interest to ‘O’ for the ‘SEs’ by putting it somewhere that will get prioritized higher.
If the goal is digital sovereignty for europe
Sovereignty is exercised and evidenced by a state’s ability to enforce the laws they have created. Microsoft operates within Europe. As long as Europe can enforce their laws upon Microsoft (as they can and do now), that relationship is still an exercise of European sovereignty.
Back to my first comment in the thread, “sovereignty != isolation”. Cutting yourself off from external groups does not make you “more sovereign” or something. If Europe cannot enforce their laws upon foreign business entities operating in their jurisdictions, and thus choose to prioritize Europe-headquartered businesses, that would be evidence of far weaker sovereign control of their jurisdiction.
Now, if it’s just a matter of prioritizing supporting European businesses, (call it, say, “Europe First”, or maybe “Make Europe Gr…” oh wait) that’s fine for them to do, and supporting any smaller business or organization over a large one is almost always preferable, but that isn’t and shouldn’t be about the perception of sovereignty or about nationalism, it should be about fighting back against corporate power by not rewarding these de facto monopolies and political meddlers and manipulators with your business.
But once again, that’s not within the scope (or ability) of a simple Office-alike application.
Exactly, they are focusing on what they do well, and letting others do their part elsewhere.
Are we to criticize Euro-Office when they don’t drive European made cars too?
This video comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vHfbUIQeW_A
