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OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

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Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#201

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Its to make people consider why they're doing something and whether it's actually for the reasons they think by comparing to another situation where the same reasons hold but they didn't do the thing. It can be a useful tool for figuring out your own feelings.

The same reasons don't hold for me, because my country is friendly with USA and (currently) openly hostile to Russia. The same holds for most of the western world, so likely most of the HN readers. Nothing irrational in avoiding software controlled by your (country's) enemy. There is also the emotional aspect that you dismiss. Using somebody's products, and especially paying for them, can be constructed as helping th…

Yes but that completely removes the weird moral high ground that some want to set. If you don't mind supporting an aggressor and an invader as long as they are not invading or attacking you, that's understandable in a way. I mean the US benefits Europe greatly. But crying (not saying you do that!) about whataboutism won't suddenly wash out that moral relativism and the precedent that was set 20 years ago. Obviously people will wonder why some lives seem to matter less than others.

It just goes to show that Europeans/westerners don't care about Iraqis, and they care about Ukrainians. Almost every other justification for the discrepancy between how Europeans reacted back in 2003 and how they did now is just rationalization or lack of perspective. Though maybe it's because I'm Muslim and arab so I'm pretty biased here. :)

(And no I'm not saying that the US is just like Russia or whatever. I'm just saying that Westerners are completely sheltered from the effects of their own foreign policy. There's no consequence from wars, interventionism etc and the effects are far away. America is a paradise compared to Russia, but it is still a superpower.)

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#202

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That’s so sad. I’d hate to work at a shop that wouldn’t allow AGPL’d software for internal tooling. What a completely legally unnecessary, productivity-hobbling decision. Perhaps the best feature of the AGPL is that it predominately hampers companies with ineffective legal departments.

One of the most notable examples is Google.

I know, but why?

Due to their size, they must have one of the best legal department in the world. Also, their core business is search, and data processing in general. They have the means of using such software and doing what it takes to comply with the licence without putting themselves in trouble.

My guess is simply that they don't want to. They prefer to rewrite it, which will allow them to monetize their tools as proprietary software later. They are already overstaffed with some of the best developers, they can rewrite stuff, and they don't really need help from the open source community, that's why they don't release under copyleft themselves.

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#203
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post #67

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To be fair, I would be more comfortable with Russian open source software that I can run locally over proprietary software from the US or Europe that run on someone else's servers. > We would like to host ONLYOFFICE ourselves. Is that possible? > Yes. It is possible to download and compile the source code. Thereafter you can deploy it on your own server. The source code is listed on GitHub and distributed under GNU A…

True, but you have a bigger user base and if there's any document exfiltration or compromise, it's more likely other people will notice too.

Yes, with open source you can look at the source, but who analyses the whole codebase before compiling anything?

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#204
post #200

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Condemning the war while being inside Russia poses grave risks to personal safety. Surely they are a software outfit, not noble heroic knights.

I don't know how i would have acted in their toes but i think i would still be held morally responsible if i just say that politics is none of my business because i'm the head of a software shop while my country is trying to annex a neighbour.

When the US illegally invaded Iraq, if I remember well people's reaction was to rename French fries to Freedom fries. I don't remember any business condemning the war.

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a sibling comment points out, the US has also done so, so what might matter here are the relative rates. And good luck finding those out through the chaos, propaganda and fog of war... We'll probably only have half decent numbers a decade from now, if that.

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I have Iraqi friends that lost multiple family members due to bombings in the 2003 war. I think most Iraqis know lost someone due to the war. Your argument is weird, do you not think that the staggering death toll from the Iraq war affected people there? I know they are just statistics when you don't actually live through it. But considering that you seem to be affected by the Russian invasion I'd think you'd reflect on that and realize that all those numbers also represent actual suffering, loss and death?

It's so weird that considering your experience, you are blatantly dismissing and downplaying what the US did. You can talk about how bad Russia is without white washing the Iraq war. Iraqis also died fighting against invaders, by the way

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not more than or less than using American or Israeli products.

I love it when every discussion about Putin's full-scale war in Ukraine gets derailed by "but the USA is doing the same". Suppose that the USA works in the same way, bombing and shelling civilians every day, torturing and raping women and children, launching massive attacks on power plants during winter to freeze the population to death, abducting children from their parents etc. Suppose all this was true. Would it g…

No the discussion was about boycotting or not using software from even citizens of a country. It wasn't a discussion about the war, it was someone asking since when do we actually have that precedent of boycotting citizens and software made by them too. Even if they operate outside russia. It never was the case before, in any war since the internet was created I guess.

It then veered towards people saying that actually, it's different when Americans invade countries.

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#207
post #190
post #187

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> Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow in the Soviet Union > The Brin family lived in Vienna and Paris while Mikhail Brin secured a teaching position at the University of Maryland with help from Anatole Katok. During this time, the Brin family received support and assistance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They arrived in the United States on October 25, 1979. He is an immigrant. https://en.wikipedia.or…

Yes, he is an immigrant but he is no longer a russian citizen. That is the whole point.

If he can be trusted to be an "American" as a naturalised citizen, why does America bar a naturalised citizen from becoming the President? (The US constitution bars naturalised citizens from contesting in the Presidential poll).

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#208
post #80
post #67

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They try hard to whitewash their affiliations to russia for potential customers while still not condemning the war. Jetbrains at least had the courage to do so even though state-owned institutions in germany are checking to cut their ties even with them. I would strictly advise against using their (OnlyOffice) products if you're in a country (eu, america) that participates in the sanctions against russia.

It’s strictly illegal for them to directly criticize the war, with potentially severe penalties.

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#209
post #67

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Zero chance. And I'm glad that I saw this comment before following link and wasting time researching this product.

To those who comment on the OSS nature of the product, I would suggest that you ask yourself if you are actually willing to perform security audits of the suite and its updates, or roll the dice and hope that your data doesn't get exfiltrated or corrupted one day. Unlike with software developed in other countries, you can't count on the developers to care about their reputation more than some quick gains. As long as the core of the devteam is in Russia - this is out of their control.

Re: OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official statistics in Russia don't mean anything anymore unfortunately

Almost all the Russians I know personally support the war. They aren’t some silly ‘90 years olds with Alzheimer’s’ crowd, most of them are software engineers. Some of them know I live in Ukraine, yet they tell me they will ‘liberate me soon.’ From my own free will, I suppose.

Keep asking them why, they will normally fail after a couple of back and forth.

"liberate us? Why", we are more free here in Ukraine.

Follow up would be: are you free enough to be against the war?

Why did so many Russians flee?

Etc...

Ps. Good luck... It's cruel what is happening now.

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