If you have not been following the recent Euro-Office drama, the short version is simple. A new European office suite project based on ONLYOFFICE was launched by IONOS and Nextcloud.
However, ONLYOFFICE then accused the project of violating the licensing terms regarding branding and attribution. And now, the Free Software Foundation asserts that ONLYOFFICE is attempting to impose restrictions not permitted under AGPLv3.
In a recent blog post, Krzysztof Siewicz, the Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Manager, stated that AGPLv3 cannot be used to restrict software freedom for downstream recipients. The organization argues that ONLYOFFICE’s requirement that distributors retain the original product logo constitutes an additional restriction that recipients are entitled to remove.
The dispute began after Euro-Office was unveiled on March 27 as a European “sovereign office suite.” The project was positioned as an alternative for organizations seeking greater control over office infrastructure and collaboration tools.
ONLYOFFICE responded by calling Euro-Office an “evident and material violation” of its licensing terms and insisted that branding, logo, and attribution requirements be maintained. On top of that, ONLYOFFICE also suspended its partnership with Nextcloud.
In that case, however, the Free Software Foundation’s post shifts the focus from a company-versus-fork dispute to a broader debate about the permissible use and limits of AGPLv3. The Foundation argues that if software is distributed under AGPLv3, licensors cannot add terms that reduce the rights guaranteed by the license.
At the same time, the Foundation is directly challenging ONLYOFFICE’s legal interpretation of the Euro-Office dispute. It maintains that a company cannot market software as AGPLv3-licensed while imposing additional terms to control the appearance of forked or redistributed versions.
For more details, see the FSF’s post.
maybe i should fork it also and only change name and logo. Maybe I rename it Forked Office.
Wikipedia sagt:
OnlyOffice (Eigenschreibweise: ONLYOFFICE) ist eine freie und quelloffene Office-Suite und ein Ökosystem von Anwendungen für die Zusammenarbeit.[1] Das Projekt ONLYOFFICE wurde von der Firma Ascensio System SIA in Russland entwickelt[2][3], der Sitz des IT-Unternehmens befindet sich jedoch in Riga, Lettland,[4] ist aber mehrheitlich in russischer Hand und unterliegt Sanktionen der EU gegen Russland im Zuge des Überfalls auf die Ukraine.
W8 that that means IF they steal our work licence under their copy right they have a legal authority to sue us for stealing their code?
even if it was our code first?
Forking open source has always been allowed, it’s why it is open source. Requiring someone to keep the same logo has never been part of open source. See OpenOffice/LibreOffice. See Clementine/Strawberry. They are suing to change/improve both the code and the change the logo.
damn
They will reach some agreement hopefully.