Questions About Using Collabora CODE in Production (Licensing, Branding, Nextcloud)

Development
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Hi everyone,

We are interested in using the word/document editing version of Collabora CODE in a production web application. Our goal is to support collaborative editing (perhaps up to 5 editors at once) and thousands of end users.

We have already embedded and integrated CODE into our app using Docker, iframes, WOPI, and UNO. Everything is working well, but I have a few important questions:

  1. Licensing / Costs – Do we need to pay to use CODE in production or pay for support? If not, what’s the best way to support the open-source effort?

  2. Branding – Are we allowed to edit the code to remove Collabora logos and about pages and replace them with our own branding? If so, would it be acceptable to include something like “Powered by Collabora” instead?

  3. Production vs. Development – I keep seeing notes that “CODE isn’t meant for production.” What exactly is meant for production use?

  4. Nextcloud – I often see Nextcloud mentioned together with Collabora. Do we need Nextcloud to deploy Collabora in production? From what I understand, it’s a full document management suite, which we don’t need.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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Hi,

Do we need to pay to use CODE in production or pay for support? If not, what’s the best way to support the open-source effort?

CODE is open source, you’re not required to buy support. However, for production use, we recommend COOL, which is the still open source version with paid support. See https://www.collaboraonline.com/contact-us/ on how to contact us or send a mail to hello@collaboraonline.com .

Branding

You are welcome to make changes to the code, as long as you conform to online/COPYING at master · CollaboraOnline/online · GitHub . Of course, retaining reasonable amount of attribution on who created the software is nice. :slight_smile: There is info about this in the about dialog, too.

Production vs. Development

https://www.collaboraonline.com/faqs/ → “What are the differences between CODE and Collabora Online?” is meant to answer this: CODE is the community version for testing / home use, COOL is meant to be used for production.

Nextcloud

You need some file storage & authentication solution, since COOL only provides document editing for you. It may be something else than Nextcloud, see the available integrations here:

In an extreme case, you can also implement your own integration, as long as you have a preferred solution that handles authentication & file storage.

Regards,

Miklos

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