Open365: open source Office 365 alternative
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.
Open365
You can sign up for the service on the official website currently but the makers plan to release repositories that you can install on servers you have control over to create a self-hosted version of Open365 that you have more control over.
When you sign up for the service you get an email address automatically assigned to you that you use to sign in to the web service and the sync clients, and for mail.
You do get 20 Gigabyte of storage as well right now which is more than what many other file synchronization services offer at the time of writing.
It is unclear however if the 20 Gigabyte are only available during the beta period.
The web service loads the "Hub" view on start automatically. It lists all libraries that you own and that are shared with you by default.
A click on a folder opens the contents directly on the web, a click on files either in one of the editors if the file format is supported, or offered for download if it is not.
The focus is on documents but support goes beyond typical document formats such as docx, xls or pptx. Open365 supports an image viewer that supports all common image formats, and a media player to play audio and video content.
Libraries or individual files can be shared or deleted online, and you may upload new files directly to the web interface using your web browser of choice.
One interesting feature is the ability to create new libraries on the Web, and here specifically the option to encrypt content so that it can only be accessed if the right password is supplied. The password is not linked to the account password.
As far as sharing is concerned, you can share files or libraries with individual users or user groups, and get full control over shared links and permissions online as well.
Document editing and creation
This works for the most part as you would expect it to work. You can load any Office document with a double-click on the web interface, and Open365 will load it in the associated editor.
You can read the document right away there, print it, or start to edit it. If you have used LibreOffice Online or offline before, you will feel right at home, but even if you have not, you will have little issues using Open365 to edit documents.
Open365 saves edits automatically in intervals, but you may use save options to to do manually at any time. Edited documents may be saved online or to the local device instead, and you may export them to the same document format or a different compatible format.
The loading time of documents is a bit slow online right now which means that you will have to wait a couple of seconds before it is displayed in the editor.
Open365 Sync Client
The sync client works for the most part as you would expect it to work. You can use drag and drop to add folders that you want to sync with the cloud, or use the built-in folder browser instead for that.
Folders are turned into libraries automatically when you add them to the sync client. You may change the name of the library and enable encryption before you hit the ok button to start the synchronization.
Options are provided to configure the sync process and other features of the desktop client. You open the options with a right-click on the icon in the system tray.
The settings allow you to set download and upload speed limits, disable http syncing, or configure what the service should do when you remove a library from a local directory or when a library is not found on the server.
Open365 Promo Video
Closing Words
Open365 is an alternative to Office 365 and Google Docs. It is free and open source, and ships both with file sync and document viewing, editing and creation options on the Internet.
The option to install Open365 on your own server may make it interesting to users who want or need to keep full control of documents, and cannot or don't want to use Office 365 or Google Docs because of this.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.