Know ONLYOFFICE better: our commercial director reveals the story behind the project in the interview for Diolinux

Galina Goduhina, our commercial director, answered questions from our Brazilian users in the interview for Diolinux. The original article was published in Portuguese, but we’ve decided to post the English version as well. Just continue reading to discover the story of the project and learn more about the ONLYOFFICE ideology.

What are the origins of ONLYOFFICE? Can you tell us the story about the application and the company?

We started ONLYOFFICE more than seven years ago. Initially it was called Teamlab, a platform for project management and internal collaboration. At the same time we were working on online document editors. Later we decided to merge the projects. The idea was to create a single workspace for all the daily tasks that any business encounters. And our users really liked this united platform and we felt great support from the community. But we also understood that our document editors were something special for us, that we found something and we have the technology, we have the team that can work wonders.

What advantages does ONLYOFFICE have over it rivals?

First of all, we have to say about HTML5. Our online editors are based on this technology. It allowed us to make online editors in terms of formatting and conversion quality more like desktop office suites.

We managed to make output similar to input – a processed file keeps the same style, paragraphs, symbol and line spacing and so on in any browser on any OS and, of course, while printing. We added many formatting features that previously were available only in desktop editors, and well, we combined them with collaborating capabilities – like, real-time co-editing.

Now ONLYOFFICE Online Editors have more formatting features than MS Office online and more collaborative features than Google Docs.
But, of course, we’ve always wanted to create a desktop app – in order, to get rid of browser limitations and work directly with system resources – which means work faster.

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors were developed on the same code core as online editors. This means they are perfectly cross-platform. And as they “were born” from online editors they just naturally have online mode: you can connect the app to ONLYOFFICE portals – in the cloud or on your private network and co-edit docs. This is our big advantage over LibreOffice. Also, comparing with Libre, we have definitely better support for MS Office formats.

Why have you launched a version for Linux too?

We would like to create a cross-platform solution for people to use it no matter the machine they have and the operating system they prefer. And, of course, Linux community is fun to work with. Linux users are picky, demanding, they were our driving force and our source of inspiration in many cases.

Our Brazilian readers would like to see the interface in Portuguese and support for accentuation.

We are working on the translation of the interface now. Any native speaker can volunteer and join our translators’ team. Just contact us for that .
As for accentuation there’s really an issue because of Chromium embedded framework used as one of components, and unfortunately we will have to wait until they fix it.

Why have you decided to open the source code of your software?

It came naturally. We realize that data security is a burning issue for most companies, especially when it comes to documents. We want be open, want people to trust us. Besides, we need to overcome that barrier people have in mind, those strong beliefs that there’s nothing but Microsoft Office, that nothing better could be created.

We choose AGPLv3 license. It means that you can use ONLYOFFICE without restrictions, but if you want to integrate it with your own solution, you will have to open its source code too and distribute it under the same license.

Is there any way in which users can participate in the development of your software?
Sure! There are several ways how to contribute to ONLYOFFICE. You can join our developer team on GitHub, test ONLYOFFICE and report issues via our developer forum or Stackoverflow. ONLYOFFICE offers an API so that everyone could extend ONLYOFFICE functionality by creating plugins or integrate it with their own application like many our partners have already done.

Leave a message for the Diolinux readers

We at ONLYOFFICE have created really cool document editors for you. Free, open and independent on the browser, system or device. We hope to welcome you as a part of our community! Thank you for attention and have a nice day!

The original article in Portuguese can be found here.