Remember when the cloud really took off in the world of tech? The idea of remotely storing files on another server was nothing new, but when companies started telling us that saving files to our local filesystem was so passe and that we should instead upload our beloved possessions onto their servers, it became a convenience everyone could use.
Fast-forward to today, and we’re seeing people come to realise what privacy advocates have been telling us all along: entrusting our data to a corporation isn’t such a great idea, especially when you can make your own cloud storage at home. And while people have been slowly warming to the idea, the recent re-initiation of LibreOffice Online is proof that people are beginning to get tired of entrusting their data to the big leagues.
LibreOffice Online is back from the dead
It was on hiatus for a little while
Before we take a look at why LibreOffice Online is a symptom of a change of attitude, we have to take a peek into what it is and why it came back from its hiatus. LibreOffice Online was originally designed as an equivalent to services such as Google Docs. However, some of the major contributors to LibreOffice were from coders who also worked on Collabora, and Collabora does have an online version. As such, LibreOffice was shelved in 2022, citing conflicts of interest.
However, the other month, a vote was held to bring LibreOffice back into development, and it passed. One of the major factors that got LibreOffice Online back in business was moving away from a model where data was stored on a server that LibreOffice itself offered. Instead, LibreOffice would offer interested parties a kit, with which they could set up their own cloud solution.
On the surface, it sounds like a simple workaround to get LibreOffice Online back on the developer’s table without stepping on Collabora’s toes. However, I believe the reason why they bothered to unfreeze to begin with is that people now don’t want a cloud-based system that’s locked behind a big company.
5 reasons why it’s still a lot better to store your data locally than in the cloud
Storing your data locally is a lot safer and more reliable than in the cloud. And depending on your needs, it may even be cheaper.
LibreOffice Online provides what privacy-minded people want
The demand is there
There are two kinds of people who supported LibreOffice opening its Online app back up: those who wanted to take control of their cloud storage, and those who feel they need to.
For the former group, the idea of hosting your own storage has been growing on people for a while now. In fact, you can ditch proprietary cloud storage services and host your files on a Raspberry Pi if you’d like. Doing so removes the need to trust a company and gives you the benefit of cloud storage at the same time.
Sure enough, LibreOffice’s announcement of Online’s resumption confirms this:
LibreOffice is a desktop application, but we get many requests for a web-based version of the suite that users can deploy on their own infrastructure.
[…]
To start the process of freeing LibreOffice Online, and to start the journey that will lead to having an online version by the community and for the community.
The process of people taking back control of their data while still benefiting from cloud-based solutions has been advancing by the day, to the point where we’re no longer in need of a big business to provide the service for us.
LibreOffice Online provides what businesses need
Taking matters into their own hands
Another big reason why LibreOffice Online came back into the spotlight was for the people who feel they really need to make this jump. For example, there are the owners of EU businesses, who have been wrestling with the problem of entrusting all of their data to a proprietary cloud.
Finnish MEP Aura Salla claimed that “The EU runs on Microsoft,” and that “The US could turn us off inside one hour.” We also saw France move 500,000+ government workstations to LibreOffice over eleven ministries, as the EU tries to cut its dependencies on US tech. These people will want a cloud service akin to what Microsoft and Google provide, and it seems LibreOffice knows this as it reboots its Online development in a bid to give its users a way to use cloud-based productivity tools while maintaining sovereignty.
As of right now, these rumblings are pretty much contained only within the EU. However, if the continent can prove that self-hosting clouds and using FOSS isn’t the suboptimal way to go about things, then it could have a ripple effect on how the world uses its data. Right now, Microsoft and Google have the upper ground of providing a great service, but once the world of FOSS plays catch-up, why would people stay? After all, who wants to pay a big business a monthly fee to store and manage their data when they can instead move everything into a reliable server they own?
LibreOffice Online’s resumption is a sign of changing times
I don’t think LibreOffice would bother bringing back Online if it didn’t feel like there was a need for it. With people adopting self-hosted options and businesses taking back control from the big service providers, I think LibreOffice Online’s return is rooted in a very real desire to gain digital sovereignty.
