ARCHITECTURE · 2026-04-12 · 7 MIN READ

Why we picked OnlyOffice as the engine

An honest comparison of the open document engines considered for Sovereign, and why DOCX fidelity, inspectability, and deployment control mattered most.

BRIEF

The short version

Project Sovereign is editor-first, so the document engine decision starts with DOCX round-tripping, collaborative editing, and a deployment model an institution can review. The public site currently positions OnlyOffice as the engine with the strongest fit for those constraints.

BRIEF

The trade-off

The choice is not framed as a claim that one open document project wins every category. It is a product fit decision: institutional document work needs strong Microsoft Office compatibility, predictable operations, and an engine that can sit inside a governed deployment boundary.