Phenquestions
Open365 is a free open source alternative to Microsoft's Office 365 and Google Docs. It features a complete online interface that lets you edit documents online and sync them with the cloud.
Open365, a Office 365, Google Docs alternative
This free online service also lets you install the Open365 client on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android for better synchronization across devices. Open365 is based upon LibreOffice online, which is another open source office productivity suite and combines the technologies of LibreOffice, KDE and SeaLife to bring out the best possible experience.
Once you've got your account and you're running you can manage your libraries, libraries are basically a group of folders or files which can share a similar set of properties. You can password encrypt a library or you can share a library by clicking the share icon corresponding to the desired library.
You can generate a Download link using which other people will be able to download files or you can generate an upload link which could be used to upload files to the library, you can share the entire library toone single person or to an entire group.
You can even create groups with your colleagues, friends or family to share files with them. Creating a group is very easy, it can be done by simply going to the Groups tab and then hitting the 'New Group' button.
Open365 features a mail client, as well which is very well built and easy to operate. You are allotted an email address when you sign up with the service.
The other applications included in the online service are Writer (Word Alternative), Calc (Excel Alternative) and Impress (PowerPoint Alternative). The online applications works pretty well until you have a pretty decent internet connection. On a relatively slow internet connections you can experience a lag or sluggishness of the service.
No doubt Open365 makes up a great open source alternative to Office 365 and Google Docs, but the service is currently in Beta and you may therefore encounter a few glitches. Some time in future, the developers may release the tools that will allow you to host Open365 on their own servers.
Click here to go to Open 365. The service is in Beta stage right now but you can sign up to get early access, as a part of the service you will also get free cloud storage of up to 20GBs which can be used to store and create documents.
