Thought Leadership
Gaël Duval has released an open-source office suite designed to replicate the look, feel, and document formatting of Microsoft Office. It is based on Euro-Office.
French entrepreneur Gaël Duval, founder of the former Mandrake Linux distribution and the privacy-focused Android operating system /e/OS, has introduced ElixirOffice, an open-source office suite aimed at users accustomed to Microsoft Office. Duval has invited early testers to try the project, which is available on GitHub. According to Duval, the software was developed with the help of AI.
The idea came from his wife, a teacher who was repeatedly offered open-source office software at work but kept returning to Microsoft Office.
“Not out of brand loyalty: the alternatives felt unfamiliar, documents from colleagues did not look right, and the habits of years (the ribbon, the shortcuts, where things are) did not work anymore.”
Gaël Duval, founder of the former Mandrake Linux distribution
Ribbon and Keyboard Shortcuts Mirror Microsoft Office
According to Duval, ElixirOffice reproduces Microsoft Office’s ribbon tabs and groups, mini toolbar, context-sensitive tabs, and keyboard shortcuts. Documents are intended to look as they would in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. The developer says the software does not transmit telemetry data. In the desktop version and when using the optional local conversion mode, documents remain on the user’s computer.
AI features are optional. Users can connect any model through an OpenAI-compatible API, including locally hosted models via Ollama. One potential use case is organizing lists and tables within documents. ElixirOffice is free to use and released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and a server version is also available.
Built on Euro-Office
ElixirOffice is a fork of Euro-Office, an office suite developed by a consortium of European companies, including IONOS and Nextcloud. Euro-Office first launched as a browser extension in June 2026 and is now also available as a desktop application. Euro-Office is itself a fork of the open-source office suite OnlyOffice, developed by Latvia-registered company Ascensio System SIA.
Ascensio accuses the Euro-Office developers of violating its licensing terms. The developers reject the allegations and cite, among other reasons, a lack of transparency at OnlyOffice and its connections to Russia as motivations for creating the fork.
Ascensio says it sold its Russian business to investors in Russia in 2019. Researchers at Cybernews found that much of the code underlying Euro-Office, which the project continues to incorporate, appears to have been written by developers whose systems were configured to use Russian time zones. The Euro-Office developers say they are reviewing and cleaning up the code.
(Editorial Team)
