Hacker News Reader

> The last time I mentioned them I was informed they are Russian.

Here's the company info on a Latvian org registry: https://company.lursoft.lv/en/ascensio-system/40103265308

I logged in to the platform, not sharing the names myself, but basically:

  * company was registered in Latvia in 2010 (e.g. included in VAT register over here)
  * board has 1 member since 2009, registered in Russia (Russian passport)
  * has 1 shareholder, Ascensio System Limited in the UK (05718967)
  * has one beneficial owner, in 2023 updated data from Russia to Turkey (passport issued in Istanbul)

In 2024 their turnover was short of 3 million EUR, seems like profit wise in 2024 they're 1 million EUR in the red. Also not sure if the site is busted, but shows the number of employees as 1.

So yeah, the company is registered over here, seems like they're trying to distance themselves from Russia for obvious reasons. Not sure why the downvotes for the parent comment, that's probably nice to mention.

Downvotes are probably for not liking openoffice.

They might have one official employee but there are a bunch of people active on their github. They might be contractors or employees of a different related company.

Feels like a complex situation to me - I like that there's all sort of software out there, esp. if there are improvements to UI/UX, but also I think that the OpenDocument formats are nice to support when possible and push as defaults (while they unfortunately might be a bit confusing to casual users who are used to MS ones).

I tried OnlyOffice and it seemed okay, even if I daily drive LibreOffice most of the time. It's nice that it's open source, but I also understand the people who are cautious about stuff coming out from Russia - I wouldn't hate on software for being developed by people from there, but it also presents an obvious risk.

Following that up in the UK companies registry, the director of Ascensio System Limited started using a service address in London since May 2025. The same filing, however, notes that his usual residential address has remained unchanged, and appears to be in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

The beneficial owner is Onlyoffice Capital Group Pte. Ltd in Singapore.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

It all seems surprisingly murky - you'd normally expect a relatively small organisation to have a more straightforward structure, even allowing for its international nature.

Playing devil's advocate for a second. It might be easier for a single person company to open up a bunch of legal entities in different places where taxes etc are more favorable. In the Russian case guy might just be wanting to be able to accept payments. Or maybe he's making sure he has somewhere to go in case of trouble. I would be very unsurprised if he took advantage of the "$250K real estate purchase gets you full citizenship and you can even rent or sell the place" scheme of Turkey to live there.

It seems overkill for what is actually a pretty tiny company - I doubt they would be big enough to trigger those sort of incentives, at least for the UK and Singaporean entities (Latvia or Turkey might, I suppose, be different - but then why bother routing it through the UK?).

I'd guess that the happy case is going to be that, yes, this structure was forced on them as a by-product of sanctions or similar negative trade policies. But I'd be worried that the software business is actually a front for something else, which would suggest that OnlyOffice might be more vulnerable to changes in legal climate than most other projects of that size.

>They also do have a LOT more than just desktop apps.

Please explain what you mean by this...

Mobile, web, collaboration etc. Check out their top level git org.

Whatever you think of their origin, this shows we need better sandboxing of desktop apps. An office tool does not need access to the internet, and it does not need to access any files other than office files.

Judging by description, it's cloud first with an electron client.

It is not. Desktop and mobile apps local (first? only?). I was thinking it's electron too (can still be) but the desktop repo shows a ton of C++ for some reason.

This is very true. I wouldn't want it to be like IOS or Android where the user itself is sandboxed and has to jump through hoops to do anything but it would be nice to be able to sandbox apps if the user wants.

does them being Russian matter ?

I think - we need to have software - not subject to political gimmicks - since countries can get into wars with each other & sanction each other etc

remember when Venezuela was sanctioned and they couldn't access Adobe 360 or whatever it's called.

It doesn't matter to me personally if it's open source. (There does seem to be some binary blobs involved in their software according to the cryptpad dicussion link I posted above. That I do not like).

I only mentioned it because it is a "thing" even though it is not my thing.