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.
