Eight submodules and three editions: what ONLYOFFICE DocumentServer actually ships

Eight git submodules and one shell script at the root

The repository you land on is not the document server. Its primary language is listed as Shell, and the working tree holds .gitmodules, mr-update.sh, CHANGELOG.md, ROADMAP.md, a screenshots/ directory and eight component directories: server, core, core-fonts, sdkjs, web-apps, dictionaries, document-formats and document-templates. Each of those is a separate GitHub project linked from this README and pulled in as a submodule, so what you clone is a superproject plus the update script that keeps the parts in step.

That shape decides where to look for anything. server is the backend software layer that everything else sits on. core does format conversion. sdkjs is the JavaScript SDK carrying the client side API. web-apps is the frontend that draws the editor interface. core-fonts bundles open source fonts used for rendering and conversion, dictionaries supplies the word lists behind spellchecking, document-formats holds metadata describing which file formats the editors accept, and document-templates holds the blank and sample files used when creating a new document.

Treat this repository as an index rather than as documentation. Each component has its own repository, its own tracker and its own release rhythm, and none of that detail is duplicated here.

Six editors over one conversion engine

The suite ships six editors rather than one: a Document Editor, a Spreadsheet Editor, a Presentation Editor, a Form Creator, a PDF Editor and a Diagram Viewer. The project description claims full compatibility with Office Open XML formats, .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, with collaborative editing in real time.

Underneath them sits one conversion component, and its format list is the most concrete fact in the README. core handles conversion between DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, PDF, HTML, EPUB, XPS, DjVu, XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, PPT, PPTX and ODP. That list runs well past the three OOXML formats in the headline, which is why a suite advertising OOXML compatibility can still open an ODT or a DjVu.

The feature list around those editors is worth reading for what it names. Collaborative editing, AI powered assistants, reviewing, spell-checking, accessibility, scalable interface options including dark mode, and a set of security tools and services. Localization is stated as 46 interface languages with right to left and hieroglyph support.

AGPL community edition, a 20 user recommendation, no clustering

Three editions are offered, separated by package name, licence and user ceiling. Community Edition is the free one, packaged as onlyoffice-documentserver, under GNU AGPL v.3, with up to 20 users recommended and clusterization marked absent in the comparison table. Enterprise Edition arrives as onlyoffice-documentserver-ee, priced per plan and proprietary, and clustering is present. Developer Edition is onlyoffice-documentserver-de, also proprietary and also clustered, described as the one for integrators who need document editing inside their own application.

That last row sets up the licence tension. The edition meant for embedding the editors in somebody else's product is the proprietary one, while the edition under an open source licence is the one sized for small teams and personal use with clustering unavailable. A team that wants to ship editing inside its own SaaS and stay on AGPL has to work that out from the licence text.

One naming wrinkle closes the section. The README notes that from version 6.0 onward the product was distributed under the name ONLYOFFICE Docs, while the package names and this repository kept the older Document Server wording. Searching for one and installing the other is an easy mistake to make.

There is no install command anywhere in this repository

Unlike a Python or Node project, this one gives you nothing to type. There is no Dockerfile, no compose file, no package manager manifest and no root script that installs the suite. The single script at the root, mr-update.sh, sits next to .gitmodules and is about keeping submodules current rather than about deploying an office server.

The README sends every reader to a web page instead, and there are three of them, one per edition: a Community download page, a Developer trial page and an Enterprise trial page. The only install-adjacent names it gives are the three package names, onlyoffice-documentserver, onlyoffice-documentserver-ee and onlyoffice-documentserver-de, plus the clone URL of this repository. If you were expecting a command line install with flags you can read, it is not in here, and the edition choice has to be settled on the vendor's pages before any deployment begins.

Plugins are explicitly barred from the OOXML layer

The plugin story carries a boundary written into it, which is worth knowing before writing any. The README states that plugins let developers add features to the editors that are not directly related to the OOXML format. Anything touching the document format itself is out of reach for plugins, and no configuration knob described anywhere in this repository changes that.

Inside that boundary the extension surface is workable. There is an API for plugins and macros, a separate GitHub repository for plugin sources, and a Marketplace for browsing what already exists. The client side plumbing for all of it lives in sdkjs, described as the JavaScript SDK containing the API for client side interaction with every included component, while web-apps is the frontend that builds the program interface where a user creates, edits, saves and exports.

Three smaller repositories support that surface instead of extending it. dictionaries holds the language word lists behind spellchecking, core-fonts bundles the open source fonts used for document rendering and conversion, and document-formats carries metadata describing the file formats the editors support, which is the closest thing here to a machine readable statement of what the suite accepts.

Where the self-hosted suite documents nothing

The gaps matter more than usual for a suite this size, and the honest list is long. The README's component and edition sections give no hardware figures, so CPU, memory and conversion load under concurrent sessions are things to check in the vendor documentation and measure yourself.

The edition table continues into support rows for each edition, so read it in full on GitHub before choosing, and settle offline use, ports, configuration and environment variables against the vendor documentation before a first deployment.

A dated release line and the licence question the repo will not settle

The release history is recent and regular enough to read. Three tags appear in order: v9.3.1 on 2026-03-03, v9.4.0 on 2026-05-19 and v10.0.0 on 2026-10-12, each named ONLYOFFICE-DocumentServer with the version appended. The last push to this repository was on 2026-10-26, later than the newest tag, which is what you would expect when master is where work continues. The root also carries CHANGELOG.md and ROADMAP.md, so maintainer intent is recorded in text even where the numbering leaves gaps.

What the repository will not settle is the obligation that follows the Community Edition. AGPL v.3 is the only open source licence among the three editions, and how its terms reach a modified version running as a service is a question for the licence text and your own counsel, not for a README. Everything else a reader needs is here: the component map, the conversion format list, the edition comparison and the routes to a download. What decides whether it fits a deployment lives in the eight component repositories and in the vendor's pricing pages.

Editorial conclusion

ONLYOFFICE Docs fits a team that wants self-hosted editing of OOXML files with real time collaboration and can either live inside the 20 user recommendation of the free Community Edition or pay for clustering. It fits badly if you need clustering on the open source edition, because the comparison table marks clusterization absent for the AGPL Community Edition. Pin a release tag rather than master, and if you plan to modify the suite and serve it, read the AGPL v.3 text in this repository's LICENSE file before assuming the Community Edition covers that.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: AGPL-3.0
2. ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer on GitHub
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases