Today we are beginning to roll out some major new features for CryptPad. We have integrated the two remaining OnlyOffice editors for text documents and presentations into CryptPad's real-time encrypted collaboration engine. This completes the OnlyOffice suite, as spreadsheets have been available for some time. Like our spreadsheet editor, these two new applications only rely on OnlyOffice's client-side components, not its server.

This work is combined with our ongoing efforts to improve import and export of documents funded by NGI DAPSI. As a result CryptPad will be much more inter-operable with existing office suites and their file formats, for example with the ability to import and export docx, pptx, and xslx files, as well as the open document formats odt, odp, and ods. Additionally, documents in these formats that are uploaded to CryptPad will no longer be treated only as static files. A new "Open in" menu makes them editable in the corresponding CryptPad application.

When we launched OnlyOffice spreadsheets at the beginning of 2019 we were inundated with support tickets as teething issues inevitably surfaced. As a team of three people handling both development and the administration of cryptpad.fr, support is a key part of our work but also the most time consuming. With two new OnlyOffice applications included in this launch we are very conscious of the risk that our effort to provide an accessible service interferes with our practical ability to improve its underlying technology. The solution we have settled on is to launch the new Document and Presentation applications as early access.

On cryptpad.fr this means that — at least for now — only people with a subscription will be able to create new documents and presentations in the new applications. They will see a warning that these applications are experimental and should not yet be trusted with important data. Anyone else will be able to open and/or edit these documents as normal when they are shared. Based on how this initial period goes, we'll decide how and when to relax these limitations.

To be clear, CryptPad is free software and will remain as such. The code for these new integrations is freely available, and will be available to all other CryptPad instances if the administrators choose to enable early-access applications.

We think this gradual rollout will result in a smoother launch and ultimately in a better experience with CryptPad for everyone. We are not interested in putting paywalls around various parts of the platform but we do have to find ways to manage our workloads in order to continue developing it. Projects such as NGI DAPSI come with deadlines that have to be met in order for us to receive their funding.

Early access means that everything remains open-source, and eventually will be available to everyone. It rewards people who support the project with a first view of much anticipated applications. This is a new thing for us, but we believe this delay to access new applications is a relatively minor step. The bigger picture is that we are working towards the long-term success of CryptPad. This involves being fully funded by our users while they currently account for only 1/3 of our budget (subscriptions on cryptpad.fr and donations combined). EU research projects such as NGI DAPSI currently cover the remaining 2/3. We have more ideas to encourage people to support the project, and to involve them in the future of the platform. One of them is giving subscribers a vote on our roadmap to decide which new features get prioritized. We will come back to this in due course.

Everyone benefits from sustainable open-source. Our recent work has advanced the state of the art in document conversion in the browser, rather than on the server where user data is exposed. This will be released independently of CryptPad so other projects can reuse it. If you are eager to see this in action, and to test the new Document and Presentation applications, please consider subscribing to a plan on cryptpad.fr to help make CryptPad sustainable for everyone.