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 Affero General Public License terms. For more details see the Server Version Frequently Asked Questions section.
You don't have that with Google Docs or Office 365.
I'm baffled how posts related to Russian software always get politicized... Can't we just celebrate good free and open source software and leave politics out of it? Don't like who's behind it? Just fork it or don't use it at all!
Software is software, people are people and governments are governments. Stop mixing it all together, it's a hypocrites minefield. If you're feeling so righteous about the countries of who writes your software, just throw your computer out of the window.
> Software is software, people are people and governments are governments.
While that is true, it is also true, that people can easily be forced by bad acting governments to do things to the software they write.
We don't need to condemn the people in general, but we can still be wary of the product they make, while being in the influence zone of certain governments.
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.
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.
If the parent comment wasn't clear enough, the consequence for openly criticizing the government in Russia is death. Demanding that others be a martyr while you stay safe from harm is a bit too much, don't you think?
Ah, indeed - can't be too high-profile. I watch candid interviews of random Russians on the street fairly frequently, and the fear of the sentence is nearly ubiquitous.
Things get a bit more complicated when the founders are russian and had R&D offices in russia. To my knowledge they claimed to have cut all financial ties to russia and they also positioned themselves publicly against the war.
Watch out there are russian immigrants founding companies all over the place! Some of them have name Sergei.
USA is even trying to attract those russian kids on purpose! What a conspiracy.
> 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.
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).
"I would strictly advise against using their products if you're in a country (eu, america) that participates in the sanctions against russia." What is the exact meaning or "their" here: OnlyOffice or JetBrains?
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.
I'm assuming you're using Microsoft Office though -- if such is the case, what then is your take on Microsoft's recent Azure security lapses? Does that, to your mind, tarnish the reputation of American big-tech?
Motivation plays a role here. I'm not defending in any means what the US, Israel and many other countries have done or are doing to others, but today, as we are writing, Russia is probably more motivated to harm western businesses by hitting common people than the US or Israel or any other country, except maybe China to a much lesser extent.
Wouldn't it be relatively trivial for someone to compile, compare checksums and call them out?
It's more likely they'd introduce a security flaw that is hard to detect in the OSS code. If someone finds, they'd just claim it was a security incident which is now fixed (and then they'd move to another masked flaw).
It makes more sense if you view america as a police officer. An officer would pull sometimes his weapon to prevent bad things from happening but the officer would never take the suspect as his personal slave like russia.
>It makes more sense if you view america as a police officer.
That's an absolutely insane comparison.
Police are funded from your taxes to protect you. Countries haven't paid taxes tot he US to come invade/drone strike them.
In your country, do police officers from other countries routinely break into your house to tear it up, steal your shit and beat you up for doing nothing? Sounds more like criminals than police.
In all seriousness, America does not pull their weapon to prevent bad things from happening (or at least, not primarily).
The US primarily works through Nato and the UN to intervene in their 'world police' role, but they are happy to start other conflicts without the support of Nato and the UN (see Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, ~~Korea~~).
If the US were really the 'world police', then where were they in Rwanda, in Sudan, in North Korea, in Sri Lanka, in Nigeria, in Myanmar, in DRC, in Ethopia, what are they doing for the Uyghurs, the Rohingyas...
EDIT: see correction from OfSanguineFire, I was wrong about Korea, which was indeed a UN-led intervention.
The US involvement in the Korean War was organized under the nascent UN.[0] "During the course of the war, 22 nations contributed military or medical personnel to UN Command. Although the United States led the UNC and provided the bulk of its troops and funding, all participants formally fought under the auspices of the UN, with the operation classified as a 'UN-led police action'."
> Not in some abstract or vague manner, directly annexing them.
Do you mean like not calling it an intervention? It's been sometime, but I don't think the Ukrainians care too much about Russia calling it a “special operation”…
Yes and if you lived in Iraq you would probably have said the same. Whats your point? You are basically saying that it's worse because it's closer to you?
The difference is actually quite stark. Iraq didn't need a massive reconstruction effort at the end of the war.
Russia, on the other hand has levelled whole cities to dust, de-populated them and forced millions to flee as refugees
because they deliberately target civilians as a matter of policy. They also torture and execute important local political figures where they occupy and immediately start their sinister policy of 'Russification'.
We see this in the west (and most of the rest of the world), and naturally despise the perpetrators.
You have got to be joking. I'm sorry but what? Iraq has barely recovered as we speak. The infrastructure still hasn't recovered. Compare Kyiv to Baghdad or even Kherson to Fallujah and yeah, Iraq got pretty destroyed all right.
By the way the US sure did target civilians, they just labeled them militants. Drone strike collateral damage etc. Do you think Russians also don't use euphemisms? Again, even if Iraq was not destroyed or civilians weren't deliberately and openly targeted, it has nothing to do with my point.
We saw a war caused by literal lies and imperialism lead to 1 million total deaths and we don't despise the citizens of the invading country. And you obviously downplay the war in Iraq because you were far removed from it (from the perspective of the Iraqis I mean). Obviously you feel more connected to Ukraine and Ukrainians but it's no reason to downplay or white wash the Iraq war by rationalizing and giving the benefit of the doubt to "our side"
How does this whataboutism exactly help Ukrainians, again? I missed where the ‘U.S. bad’ narrative gives Russia permission to do whatever they want. You are basically changing subject here and say ‘Russia can do whatever they want because (yada yada) [someone did something somewhere as well]’.
You posted almost a dozen flamewar comments to this thread. That's not allowed here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are—and yes, I totally get that you have good reasons to feel the way you do.
Nonetheless, taking HN threads into hellish flamewars does nothing except make things worse, and it's not allowed here (for anybody, regardless of nation).
You are basically repeating the same tired paragraphs without even reading what I said. Who is talking about whataboutism here? I was replying to a comment that repeatedly downplayed the Iraq war. Maybe don't do that? You aren't "owning the Russians" by asserting ridiculous and false narratives (like that Iraq wasn't somehow destroyed). I never changed subject, I just called out white washing of the Iraq invasion.
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.
Excuse me, what the actual duck are you saying? A blatant whataboutism targeted at teenagers, don’t you?
What relative rates are you talking about? I literally live in Ukraine and you tell me the Russian ‘U.S. bad’ narrative, ‘propaganda and fog of war’.
What fog of war? It’s unclear to you who is the aggressor, isn’t it? Is that the fog of war you are talking about?
Do you personally know anyone who was murdered by the U.S.? No? Well, I do know people that were murdered by Russians. For no ducking reason. Some of them were protecting their country from an aggressive invaders, others were just peacefully sleeping in their beds.
I think this ‘U.S. is also bad’ take is irrelevant and inappropriate, especially in this very timeframe of ongoing war.
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
It’s irrelevant to the current topic. Considering everything you tell about Iraq is true, and not just a biased way to tell that story, it doesn’t change a thing about the current ongoing war Russia placed on Ukrainian heads.
It is super relevant to the current topic, which is that not using something just because it's made by Russian citizens (not corporations or the state) is ridiculous unprecedented. That's the point, even if you seem to somehow doubt that what happened in Iraq... happened? It doesn't change the fact that there's no precedent for that.
> Do you personally know anyone who was murdered by the U.S.? No? Well, I do know people that were murdered by Russians. For no ducking reason. Some of them were protecting their country from an aggressive invaders, others were just peacefully sleeping in their beds.
This is nothing but personal bias. An Iraqi could say the same thing, but with the roles swapped.
> I think this ‘U.S. is also bad’ take is irrelevant and inappropriate, especially in this very timeframe of ongoing war.
Again, that is your personal bias showing.
Two things can be bad at the same time. We can acknowledge that Russia is doing bad things in Ukraine and that the US is helping defend the country. That doesn't absolve the US from its sins committed elsewhere, however.
Any military force will have such incidents. What separates them is the extent they try to prevent and punish such things. The US is certainly not perfect, but there have been attempts to curb such behaviour.
Meanwhile, a UN envoy collects extensive evidence that the torture and murder of Ukrainian (civilian and military) prisoners held by Russia is not only widespread, but shows clear signs of being coordinated in method and promoted from above in command.
Blatant imperialism apologia lol. You lose your entire credibility of being against an invader when you then downplay what the US did. I guess the one million deaths was fine since it was just an oopsie and the Americans didn't mean it.
I don't downplay what the US did, in fact I frequently complain to anyone who will listen and some who won't how absoletely butchered the occupation of Iraq was and what huge ramifications it had. Paul Bremer is not a favourite of mine. I marched in protests against the invasion.
They are part of a wider context of a war they did not initiate, often in occupied territories, fighting alongside the native People of said territories (eg. Siegfried Line campaign, Invasion of [German occupied] Elba, Allied invasion of [German occupied] Italy, [German occupied] Normandy landings, Operation Overlord, Battle of [German occupied] Marseille.)
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 give Russia a moral excuse to do what they are doing?
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.
That post is out of date. As of August, it developed by a Latvian company ultimately owned by a Singaporean holding company (Onlyoffice Capital Group Pte. Ltd). The Russian market is served by a fork called P7-Office.
I cannot say if there are still indirect ties to Russia, but the direct ones appear fully severed?
The information is still correct. Moving your headquarters is a pretty old trick to circumvent state sanctions (while leaving a good chunk of operations in the sanctioned country as an example) and doesn't fly with checking institutions.
Please do your own research and answer two simple questions below.
How much time (money no object) would it take for you personally to get any citizenship other than your current one?
How much time (assuming your current level of income) would it take for you personally to get any citizenship other than your current one?
I have done my research. The answer to the first question is 6 months (if advertisements on the black market are true), and the second one is between 5 and 10 years. So please don't blame people based solely on their citizenship.
Unless the Singaporean entity uses its funds in a pro-russian manner, I'd consider this fairly isolated.
Sanctions against Russia exist to hurt Russian economy and trade to punish and limit their war capacity. If the money stays outside and does not support the war, then I do not see an issue with a Russian citizen living abroad having an indirect controlling stake.
The article from the link does not provide any evidence to support the statement "The Company however is russian". Does anyone else have any info on this accusation?
Excerpt via Google translate, though the whole thing might be worth a read via Google translate or ChatGPT or whatnot:
> The majority of OnlyOffice employees are citizens of Russia who are in this country or hold positions in the Latvian and Russian offices at the same time.
> The developers of OnlyOffice in the Russian information space emphasize that the Latvian Ascensio System SIA is a one hundred percent daughter and one hundred percent property of the Russian company NKT. The open database of Lursoft companies registered in Latvia also points to a Russian beneficiary.
I've been using it for 3 years comrade and I still prefer Russian snooping to Alphabet snooping or Microsoft security lapses. I'd rather get Collabra going via Nextcloud but my laziness stops me.
when usa invaded afghanistan to "avenge 9/11" or iraq over false pretenses that became apparent to everyone but no one cares because "muh american exceptionalism", no one went about their way and "avoided american companies".
what has a russian company have to do with the war? tomorrow if usa once again starts a war to decimate another country for petrodolalrs, will you go out of your way and start shunning your own country?
- the Afghanistan invasion was an actual reaction to a direct attack, not a “you are close to joining an opponent alliance”
- in the west people were free to criticize the invasion, while Russians have much to fear if they are anti-war.
The first point is more moral, while both wars are ridiculous, they are different scale of ridiculous, but not important from business perspective.
This is extremely important from a business perspective, as it shows the state heavy arm on its people and therefore its business. If it controls people’s speech, people’s business are under even more control.
So, as a business, you face a much bigger risk depending on some compony from a “controlling state”, then a more free state.
This doesn’t mean that USA/the west, doesn’t use it’s private companies, it’s just a difference on scale, and how easy/entrenched that control is.
Another example, is that many european PMs lost the next election cycle with major reason being supporting that war effort. Also, people were actually allowed to protest. Checkout how russian protests are handled.
Just like even today in eastern eurocountries there are some sons of ex wealthy soviets nicknamed “homo sovietis”, with their soviet themed bars, which are perfectly allowed today, but i wonder what would happened if during their youth they opened a “capitalist/ocidental” bar.
When did Afghanistan attack the US? You realize that they did offer to extradite bin Ladin, right? Did Iraq attack the US too? Might as well believe made up Russian propaganda about the Donbass.
Also Who cares if the people in the west were free to criticize it? It didn't stop the war, and it has absolutely nothing to do with embargoes and boycotts. Absolutely no one in Iraq cares that Americans still had their free speech when they destroyed their country and set them back 30 years
Russia wouldn't suddenly be a fine member of the international community if their government wasn't censoring criticism of the war while still invading Ukraine.
Yes to be clear I agree that doing business with Russian citizens in russia itself is not something I would do. I was referring to Russian corporations that basically migrated away from Russia but still have a most Russian (by citizenship) staff.
Also, just to provide a source and details on the extradition offer, they offered to extradite him to a third country for trial which I think is more than reasonable, but the US said that there was no need for proof or process.
>The United States today rejected yet another offer by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in a third country if the U.S. presents evidence against bin Laden and stops air attacks.
>"There's no need to discuss it," Bush said. "We know he's guilty. Just turn him over. … There's nothing to negotiate about. They're harboring a terrorist and they need to turn him over."
So essentially the US and the rest of the world razed a country to the ground because they wanted a man so badly that when the country offered to give that man a fair trial before a third neutral country, the US found that offensive and destroyed them?
democracy much?
Yes it's honestly troubling. Until recently I completely believed that they didn't want to give up bin laden at all. Even then, it was unjustified imo to invade a country since I'm sure the US also refuses extradition sometimes.
But to hear that the Talibans were the reasonable or at least negotiating party here is insane.
yeah, what difference is that from blood thirsty tyrants who wish to destroy worlds ? genghis khan slaughtered a huge chunk of human population because he was insulted or something stupid silly. isn't this the same thing?
On the whole, the answer here is "not at all," or if anything, slightly increases the likelihood that I'll use it.
1) There's a difference between a government and people living in that country. If my country does something evil, that doesn't mean you should attack me (personally). The firebombing of Dresden by the allies in WWII is widely considered a war crime since it targeted civilians and killed many little children.
2) With sanctions on this war, I see two valid goals: (1) Regime change (2) Not funding / supporting the war. To be clear: Punishment of people in Russia is not a valid goal for sanctions.
3) With a country doing something evil, simply cutting off ties doesn't have much positive effect (see North Korea).
4) Attacking people simply polarizes them to hate you and supports Putin's message.
5) Even under sanctions, there are constructive ways of engagement. These generally center on communications and cultural engagement. Things like rock-and-roll, Disney, Coca Cola, McDonald's and blue jeans played a pretty significant role in the downfall of the Soviet Union. Trade helped open up China (it's not open, but it's a much freer, nicer place to live than 50 years ago, largely due to people doing business across borders).
My general conclusion here:
1) I don't think we should be buying anything from Russia. That provides money to support the war effort.
2) I don't think we should be exporting anything which can in any way be used to help build weapons (e.g. technology, raw materials, etc.).
3) I'm also on the more extreme end of sending more weapons to Ukraine (much more than we have been).
On the other hand, with Russia, I am fully in favor of scientific engagement (think blue whales and not radar research), educational engagement, cultural engagement, as well as things like open source.
Controversially, I'm also supportive of /selling/ luxury goods to Russia. I don't think it supports the regime in any appreciable way, and a Gucci handbag won't help the war effort. It does bring in Western culture and leads to capital outflow.
> 1) There's a difference between a government and people living in that country. If my country does something evil, that doesn't mean you should attack me (personally). The firebombing of Dresden by the allies in WWII is widely considered a war crime since it targeted civilians and killed many little children.
This. 20 years ago I read an article that spoke of the Iranian peoples' admiration for American people, while the two governments were actively hating each other. It changed everything about how I perceived other countries. We don't have to be our governments.
Apart from the questionable nature of polling in a totalitarian dictatorship there's also the question of propaganda and lies making people support things they shouldn't.
Even worse: it's used as propoganda itself, they export this idea of all russians being united against the west bla-bla-bla. While in reality most people just don't want to think about it, and the state does everything to keep the "normality level" acceptable. This may sound unrealistic to the americans who seems to have their political opinion all the time, but russians just don't care, there're even jokes about "not interested in politics", not even if it threatens their lifes
When someone rapes someone in front of you and you are like ‘oh, I don’t care’ you are helping the aggressor, not the victim. That’s what Russians are. ‘We are out of politics’ is not an excuse when your county places a genocidal war over another sovereign nation. By whitewashing Russians you help only Russians. Not the best time to play on the Russian side.
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.
Oh no, those who are ideological won’t fail quickly. It’s not that you show them there is no logic and they change their minds. It’s more like absolutely controversial realtors would peacefully coexist next to each other in their heads. The same way those conspiracy fanatics do.
We cannot draw a legitimate statistics, as that could be our own bubble. But it’s incorrect to say an average Joe doesn’t support the war. Even those who oppose the war, do they do something? Or do they like ‘I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can (want to) do.’
That's redefining "support" to mean something completely different. You'll get in a lot of pointless fights if you don't make it clear to people you're using an obscure definition.
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 the company and thus indirectly helping the company's country. Not everyone wants to support the country they see as an aggressor. That's not contradictory too - many people in western countries are OK with helping the US, but very uneasy with helping Russia (reasons for this are a different topic).
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.)
I... think I agree. Thanks for your calm and reasonable response.
>If you don't mind supporting an aggressor and an invader as long as they are not invading or attacking you (...)
I do mind, but sadly I (my country) has to support someone and the US is (IMO) the "least bad" option. More about that later.
I'm not ashamed to say that I care about the war in Russia more than other wars for mostly selfish reasons [1]:
* It's much easier for me to connect and empathise with people from another European country then with people from a distant culture (irrational reason)
* It impacts me and my country much more directly (rational reason)
* Countries need allies. Unfortunately it's necessary to side with at least one superpower. And it's politically wise to overlook friendly superpower crimes while loudly criticising enemy's. To clarify: in my opinion US is the "least evil" option, and the Russian state is the most harmful - but I'm obviously biased here as an European.
>It just goes to show that Europeans/westerners don't care about Iraqis, and they care about Ukrainians
100%. Funny you mention that, I wanted to bring it up as an example for my previous paragraph and then noticed the second part of your message. I understand the frustration of all the victims of recent wars and aggressions who suffered the same and the world largely stood back (at best, loudly condemned the attack and the news cycle moved on). No point in gaslighting them that their suffering was less important or less significant then Ukrainians.
[1] Of course I won't say this publicly. It's easy to misunderstand or intentionally misrepresent my message as a support for Russian invasion or worse. No point in harming my future career by saying one word too much.
https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.de/2023/05/30/software-onlyoffi...