Edit your documents in your own space

Having a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation tool available in a web browser is very, very cool – especially for collaborative work.

Storing your documents in some tech giants’ cloud without the slightest idea about where your data is being stored and what your data is used for, and editing your documents using tools made available for you without access to the source code, in short, simply handing over all your personal documents to a giant, foreign entity outside your country’s rule of law, is not so cool.

As far as I can tell, there are only two open source office suites available, that run in a web browser: Collabora and OnlyOffice (if I have missed some, please let me know). The problem of course is to find a server to run/host them and then find the time to download, install and configure them. As with most other software, this is not so easy. Once this is done, you of course also have to get to know the software in order to be productive. In short, most people have better things to do with their time, and stick with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. In the end it turns out this convenience has come with a very hefty price, especially for Europe. At this point in time, it is an uphill battle to get people weaned off Microsoft and Google, but eventually something has to be done.

So, I sat down and packaged OnlyOffice, or to be more precise their collaboration platform “Docspace” (which includes the OnlyOffice editors) as an Origo OS stack for one-click deployment at zero cost to any private cloud running Origo OS. It’s no Microsoft 365 and it’s no Google Workspace, but it’s perfectly fine for creating and editing simple documents in your very own space. Check it out here: https://www.origo.io/cloud#app-1715.