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Open365 Is An Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Office 365 (open365.io)
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.
Hint: Nobody creates spreadsheets on their phone.
Ok, but opening and reading spreadsheets and documents is rather common when on the go.
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.
Most devices support reading office files by themselves anyways. Office 360 give you the ability to edit those files. Where such office tools were never designed for touchscreen usage. The UI had just been hacked for functionality.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Seems like this is a closer equivalent to that than Office 365....
love is just extroverted narcissism
Alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office. These days we use nothing but Google Docs internally, and a select few of us use Microsoft Office to write docs that interface with the outside world.
If it does multi-person realtime collaboration (which Google Docs does) I'll probably check it out.
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 already tell people to keep Windows 10 to keep their privacy, yet getting people off Google Docs was a bit of an effort. Possible this will help fix that.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Thin clients are back
But your browser is bloated
How does it fit?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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.
Disaster recovery. Collaboration. Probably remote access.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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
Oh Tay, what have they done to you?
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
Collaboration... And easy way to work on documents together without having to install additional software. A conference call discussing the scope of work document while you all work in it can make a several week process into a one hour process.
I understood the main gain from this was to set up your own OC server and run it with that.
...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.
Dear developers: Please ensure your site is functional in browsers other than Chrome.
I first noticed the odd animation on https://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 browser (Dolphin?).
So install Open 365 on your home network and host it completely under your control.
Disaster recovery. Collaboration. Probably remote access.
Of course, he is not alone in missing that... :)
I edit them as well. Having stage 4 CKD, I keep a detailed log of medication taken and blood pressure. Google sheets is quite useful for this on my Nexus 6P.
I also created a spreadsheet to track weight loss goals, and I used the Harris-Benedict equation to figure out calorie goals as weight changed. It worked, by the way.
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.
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.
My experience has been that Libre Office has better compatibility with the dozens of MS Office versions than any version of MS Office does. In other words, if I want to edit a Word document created three years ago, I'll tend to get better results in Libre than in Office 365.
I have some documents created in MS Word about ten years ago, which is maybe four file formats ago. MS Office won't open them at all, Libre has no trouble with them.
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!
until you stop paying for it, and all your files are lost to you.
I pay $99 for 5 instances of all of that and consider it well worth it. 5 installs of Office. 5TB of cloud storage. 5 hours of Skype minutes. etc. I consider it the second best deal in tech....Amazon Prime being the first.
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 just upload it on another service as I have backups. And if they really need to know the level of the paladin in my party... whatever.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
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.
That would be the part where GP wrote that "[o]nline services should only be used when you want to share information with others."
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.
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 ?
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 somewhere for a half hour, I can open my story and write a couple hundred words on my phone. If I get a great idea for a future story direction, I can make a note of it right in the document. If I want to read it to my son (he loves hearing the story I'm writing and reading it to him forces me to proof-read it), I can do this from anywhere as long as I have my phone with me. (I also use the commenting system in Google Docs to record where my son and I have read up to.)
If I had this as a local computer file, I wouldn't be able to add to my story as often and I wouldn't be as far into the story as I am now (32,000 words and counting). Yes, when it comes time to look into publishing it, I'll likely import it into LibreOffice for better formatting options, but Google Docs gives me an ease of use that locally installed programs don't.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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 on the same document but different slides.
In this case it's better than "Great, I'll make those changes and email the updated copy to everyone by the end of the day."
The bottom of open365.io page has:
© eyeOS 2016.
What is the license than?
4wdloop
Google Voice. Unlimited free calling to US/Canada. So that negates the whole Skype minutes thing.
Web site still doesn't say how yet. It's mostly signup-walled.
"I also created a spreadsheet to track weight loss goals, and I used the Harris-Benedict equation to figure out calorie goals as weight changed. It worked, by the way."
Shouldn't you change your handle from ArmoredDragon to ArmoredLizzard then? :-)
>> Why would anyone use Google Docs for anything more advanced than a shopping list?
Multiple devices. Collaboration - you can actually see where other people are looking on a doc and they can make changes in real time. Instant and frictionless sharing - what you share IS the doc, not a link to a download.
To me, it's a question of why would use use Microsoft Office for anything other final editions meant to be shared (in Office format) with the outside world?
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!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
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.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
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.
lawl. Actually it's a reference to my Army MOS, 19D.
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?
If you are signed up to Amazon Prime, you get a selection of streaming video for free too.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Why would anyone use Google Docs for anything more advanced than a shopping list? It seems a glitchy, simplistic, insecure alternative to MS Office.
Because it's none of those things and you're just making shit up with no factual basis.
It does probably 90% of what Microsoft Office does, and 100% of what the vast majority of people need. Formulas, formatting, import/export, graphs, you can plug apps into it, versioning, collaboration, etc etc etc. 99% of people don't need all the power of Excel.
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.
I like how you assume everyone is just like you and only orders 3-4 times a year from Amazon.
I order 3-4 times a month from Amazon. I haven't been into a Wal-Mart in years. Couldn't be happier.
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 bottom line of known spy agencies such as Google.
Digital Citizen
https://support.google.com/doc...
Yes.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
To me, it's a question of why would use use Microsoft Office for anything other final editions meant to be shared (in Office format) with the outside world?
An even better practice would be to have the final document rendered to PDF.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman