Several open source alternatives exist, though, enabling you to edit collaboratively, in real-time, shared documents that exist on your own server, or on the server of someone you know and trust.

They each require registration, which could be a problem if you collaborate with someone who doesn't care to provide their personal information for data harvesting, and neither of them load in some lightweight browsers.

Your data is uploaded and stored on a third-party server (either Google or Microsoft, respectively). Simultaneous editing has become relatively common thanks to online document editors like Google Docs and MS Office 365, but neither of those are open source. It's asynchronous, but modified versions of documents are merged into the original version, stored in a repository. It usually goes like this: send a document, wait for the response, make corrections, send it again, wait for the result, make corrections, and so on until the result satisfies both parties.Īnother way to collaborate on documents is to use version control systems such as Subversion or Git, but these tools don't allow real-time collaboration.

When you deal with a lot of documents every day, whatever you write-whitepapers, manuals, presentations, different marketing materials, contracts, etc.-at a certain point (most commonly, at the final stage) you have to interact with different people, specifying and discussing details, proofreading and approving them.Įven today the most common way to proceed, in many cases, is to send an email.

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