Seems onlyoffice is "unforkable"? It's AGPL but has extra restrictions: you're required to show their logo but they don't give out rights for others to use their logo.
Doesn't the AGPL specifically disallow that? If I understand correctly, the FSF has even directly threatened legal action against developers who add extra restrictions to the AGPL. The license text is copyrighted, does not allow modifications, and includes terms allowing the user to ignore any additional restrictions, so adding extra restrictions would seem to either be ineffective or a copyright violation.
OnlyOffice claims that additional terms fall under section 7 of AGPLv3, which explicitly allows adding such terms. I think the point of contention arises from the interpretation of section 7 and more specifically this sentence:
> When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of it.
> In other words, AGPLv3 does not permit selective application: a recipient either accepts AGPLv3 in its entirety, including all additional conditions, or acquires no rights to use the software.
> Any removal, disregard, or unilateral “exclusion” of conditions imposed under Section 7 constitutes use beyond the scope of the granted license and therefore a breach.
It can disallow downstream licensees from doing things with it, it can't prevent the copyright holder and licensor.
> If I understand correctly, the FSF has even directly threatened legal action against developers who add extra restrictions to the AGPL. The license text is copyrighted, does not allow modifications, and includes terms allowing the user to ignore any additional restrictions, so adding extra restrictions would seem to either be ineffective or a copyright violation.
If it's a copyright violation of a copyright on the license, that has no effect on the effect of the license between the licensor and licensee, though it may result in money being owed by the licensor to the copyright holder on the license.
OTOH, I think any US court would find that a party trying to control the legal effect of licensing arrangements between third parties by leveraging a copyright on license text is, itself, a fairly strong indication that the particular use of the license text at issue is outside of the scope of copyright protection. That's not protecting expression, it is instead creating a roadblock to the freedom of contract.
from my reading, onlyoffice misread AGPL and the restrictions are not what section 7 meant; however that just means it's not really an AGPL licensed code as they are using AGPL wrong, not that NextCloud can just ignore it and treat it as AGPL.
(if OnlyOffice is really all their code and not some other re-forked AGPL code. I haven't looked.)
if you make an exception to obeying licenses because "that person/company/country are bad" or whatever, exceptions start sneaking in all over the place, and the entire fabric deteriorates quickly afterwards.
edit: did not expect people to be in favor of blatantly ignoring licenses. huh.
anyone want to tell me how we determine who the bad people are that we can ignore their licenses, and who the good people are where we will honor them? what is the criteria?
> 1. OnlyOffice is claiming that the license was violated
The part of the license violated was the removal of OnlyOffice's trademark and branding. Yet their license does not provide a right to use their trademark and branding. Those rights are still fully reserved by OnlyOffice.
This allows OnlyOffice to use legal means to shut down any fork or changes they are not comfortable with.
Question being did OnlyOffice terminate the business relationship in a legal way. Just because you dislike a companies trajectory doesn't necessarily immediately allow you to terminate business relations.
> 2. Even if you fork a project in complete compliance with a software license, a software license doesn't grant you an ongoing business partnership
That's fair, I'd just argue it's akin to to Red Hat's current model of "All of our code is free and open source...but if any of our business subscribers share it, we will terminate their license."
I was wondering about how they came to the conclusion that they violated the copyright, so I went to check if they did the AGPL[1] with some extra clauses in it. Turns out they didn't, but they did change[2] it[3] in an interesting way: All the https urls in the GNU version are http urls.
> You must follow all license terms, including these extra conditions, to legally use or distribute the software.
Good thing that the license says in section 7: “[…] When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions [“terms that supplement the terms of this License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions”] from that copy, or from any part of it. […]”
I agree with the posters above that OnlyOffice conflates retaining branding with retaining attribution.
However, AGPL doesn't require retaining attributions other than copyright notices by default. Under section 7b, the copyright holder can specify which attributions to retain.
Under 7b, OnlyOffice specified that forks must "retain the original Product logo". I agree with others that this is not a legitimate way to request attribution, and therefore this could be removed from the license. See section 7:
>If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.
Therefore, I think there is no obligation to attribute OnlyOffice, only to retain the original copyright notices.
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Additionally, I haven't seen any evidence for the claim that Euro-Office actually removed the logos from their fork. Can anybody find such a commit?
Important bit of information is further down in the article: OnlyOffice is Russian. I would therefore view any collaboration as a risk. It's not adequate for strategic reasons as well as sovereignty.
If you need Docx compatibility to interface with the rest of the world, are you better off with the at-least open source option or the sign-your-life-in-eula-and-O365-subscription option.
This isn't rhetorical. I don't know which is worse. I lean disliking Microsoft more, because jazz hands at Windows11, and OnlyOffice at least runs on Linux, but it's still not a fun position to be in.
LibreOffice and other alts definitely don't have as good of Docx compat.
OnlyOffice was trying to implement some extra restrictions on top of the AGPL. Now they seem to be throwing a fit knowing that was not allowed. You can't bake your pie and eat it too.
This seems like a corruption of "you can't have your cake and eat it too." I'm somewhat confused as you can definitely both bake a pie and eat it too. Or are you trying to make some kind of point that I'm missing?
This is bullshit. Read section 7 paragraph b of the AGPLv3 license, and you'll see that OnlyOffice did what they were allowed to do. The Nextcloud blog here is spreading FUD on their partner which will likely cause more damage to them if OO's lawyer starts to have a look on this. People don't read license text, but they should, because they think AGPL is like GPL which is not the case, they are additional restrictions to the former.
An example of how european "tech" reacts to threats. 2 european open source projects in litigation with each other and one of them engineered a license to prevent an obvious feature of open source software (forking) while the other is throwing shades at opacity and geopolitical control at the first.
Right? Kinda weird; I wonder what tiny pie it is that they think they're fighting over, and what makes any of these individual projects think that they're powerful enough over the others (not saying they might not be)
Seems onlyoffice is "unforkable"? It's AGPL but has extra restrictions: you're required to show their logo but they don't give out rights for others to use their logo.
>It's AGPL but has extra restrictions
Doesn't the AGPL specifically disallow that? If I understand correctly, the FSF has even directly threatened legal action against developers who add extra restrictions to the AGPL. The license text is copyrighted, does not allow modifications, and includes terms allowing the user to ignore any additional restrictions, so adding extra restrictions would seem to either be ineffective or a copyright violation.
OnlyOffice claims that additional terms fall under section 7 of AGPLv3, which explicitly allows adding such terms. I think the point of contention arises from the interpretation of section 7 and more specifically this sentence:
> When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of it.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html#section7
OnlyOffice claims:
> In other words, AGPLv3 does not permit selective application: a recipient either accepts AGPLv3 in its entirety, including all additional conditions, or acquires no rights to use the software.
> Any removal, disregard, or unilateral “exclusion” of conditions imposed under Section 7 constitutes use beyond the scope of the granted license and therefore a breach.
https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-lic...
To me (IANAL etc) that seems questionable. But I also say that the section 7 in entirety is not particularly clear.
It says that you can add requirement of attribution but also that such additional term can be removed, so it seems rather pointless?
See also this post from 2022: https://opensource.org/blog/modified-agplv3-removes-freedoms...
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> Doesn't the AGPL specifically disallow that?
It can disallow downstream licensees from doing things with it, it can't prevent the copyright holder and licensor.
> If I understand correctly, the FSF has even directly threatened legal action against developers who add extra restrictions to the AGPL. The license text is copyrighted, does not allow modifications, and includes terms allowing the user to ignore any additional restrictions, so adding extra restrictions would seem to either be ineffective or a copyright violation.
If it's a copyright violation of a copyright on the license, that has no effect on the effect of the license between the licensor and licensee, though it may result in money being owed by the licensor to the copyright holder on the license.
OTOH, I think any US court would find that a party trying to control the legal effect of licensing arrangements between third parties by leveraging a copyright on license text is, itself, a fairly strong indication that the particular use of the license text at issue is outside of the scope of copyright protection. That's not protecting expression, it is instead creating a roadblock to the freedom of contract.
It's a bit funny to be relying on copyright for a license to work when the copyright will eventually expire.
2 replies →
Then it't not AGPL, because Section 10 of the AGPL explicitly states:
| You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html#section10
Yeah, LibreOffice and Nextcloud have both called OnlyOffice out, basically accusing it of being "open source" in name only [1][2]
[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/libreoffice-blasts-fake-open-sou...
[2] https://github.com/Euro-Office#euro-office-liberates-the-onl...
from my reading, onlyoffice misread AGPL and the restrictions are not what section 7 meant; however that just means it's not really an AGPL licensed code as they are using AGPL wrong, not that NextCloud can just ignore it and treat it as AGPL.
(if OnlyOffice is really all their code and not some other re-forked AGPL code. I haven't looked.)
Given that it's a Russian company, serious question: does anyone care about violating their license?
If so, why?
if you make an exception to obeying licenses because "that person/company/country are bad" or whatever, exceptions start sneaking in all over the place, and the entire fabric deteriorates quickly afterwards.
edit: did not expect people to be in favor of blatantly ignoring licenses. huh.
anyone want to tell me how we determine who the bad people are that we can ignore their licenses, and who the good people are where we will honor them? what is the criteria?
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[flagged]
If "forking without approval" is grounds for some kind of termination, then the project should probably not be considered truly "open source".
1. OnlyOffice is claiming that the license was violated
2. Even if you fork a project in complete compliance with a software license, a software license doesn't grant you an ongoing business partnership
> 1. OnlyOffice is claiming that the license was violated
The part of the license violated was the removal of OnlyOffice's trademark and branding. Yet their license does not provide a right to use their trademark and branding. Those rights are still fully reserved by OnlyOffice.
This allows OnlyOffice to use legal means to shut down any fork or changes they are not comfortable with.
7 replies →
Question being did OnlyOffice terminate the business relationship in a legal way. Just because you dislike a companies trajectory doesn't necessarily immediately allow you to terminate business relations.
3 replies →
> 2. Even if you fork a project in complete compliance with a software license, a software license doesn't grant you an ongoing business partnership
That's fair, I'd just argue it's akin to to Red Hat's current model of "All of our code is free and open source...but if any of our business subscribers share it, we will terminate their license."
1 reply →
Shhh! Nobody tell Redhat.
I was wondering about how they came to the conclusion that they violated the copyright, so I went to check if they did the AGPL[1] with some extra clauses in it. Turns out they didn't, but they did change[2] it[3] in an interesting way: All the https urls in the GNU version are http urls.
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt
[2]: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/core/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
[3]: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/onlyoffice-nextcloud/blob/mast...
That's just the FSF editing the license text without updating the version number or date.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160114094744/https://www.gnu.o...
For the record, this is the argument ONLYOFFICE's lawyer is making:
- ONLYOFFICE is under AGPLv3 since 2016.
- AGPLv3 requires source disclosure, preserving the license, and keeping copyright notices.
- Section 7 lets ONLYOFFICE add conditions: keep the logo and no trademark use.
- You must follow all license terms, including these extra conditions, to legally use or distribute the software.
- Ignoring these conditions is a license breach and copyright infringement.
> You must follow all license terms, including these extra conditions, to legally use or distribute the software.
Good thing that the license says in section 7: “[…] When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions [“terms that supplement the terms of this License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions”] from that copy, or from any part of it. […]”
4 replies →
Their lawyer is right about everything except:
> - Section 7 lets ONLYOFFICE add conditions: keep the logo and no trademark use.
Section 7 allows you to add permissions, but it prohibits any restrictions beyond the options listed in section 7.
2 replies →
I agree with the posters above that OnlyOffice conflates retaining branding with retaining attribution.
However, AGPL doesn't require retaining attributions other than copyright notices by default. Under section 7b, the copyright holder can specify which attributions to retain.
Under 7b, OnlyOffice specified that forks must "retain the original Product logo". I agree with others that this is not a legitimate way to request attribution, and therefore this could be removed from the license. See section 7:
>If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.
Therefore, I think there is no obligation to attribute OnlyOffice, only to retain the original copyright notices.
----
Additionally, I haven't seen any evidence for the claim that Euro-Office actually removed the logos from their fork. Can anybody find such a commit?
https://github.com/Euro-Office/server/commit/90a473b99f8ca7b...
Important bit of information is further down in the article: OnlyOffice is Russian. I would therefore view any collaboration as a risk. It's not adequate for strategic reasons as well as sovereignty.
If you need Docx compatibility to interface with the rest of the world, are you better off with the at-least open source option or the sign-your-life-in-eula-and-O365-subscription option.
This isn't rhetorical. I don't know which is worse. I lean disliking Microsoft more, because jazz hands at Windows11, and OnlyOffice at least runs on Linux, but it's still not a fun position to be in.
LibreOffice and other alts definitely don't have as good of Docx compat.
Not sure why you were downvoted; it's quite possible that Nextcloud was more concerned about the political independence/potential sanctions aspect.
Isn't the whole idea behind AGPL that you're allowed to fork and modify it as long as you provide your modified source code to the users?
OnlyOffice was trying to implement some extra restrictions on top of the AGPL. Now they seem to be throwing a fit knowing that was not allowed. You can't bake your pie and eat it too.
> You can't bake your pie and eat it too.
If you don't, I would advise you to at least attempt doing so.
> You can't bake your pie and eat it too.
This seems like a corruption of "you can't have your cake and eat it too." I'm somewhat confused as you can definitely both bake a pie and eat it too. Or are you trying to make some kind of point that I'm missing?
This is bullshit. Read section 7 paragraph b of the AGPLv3 license, and you'll see that OnlyOffice did what they were allowed to do. The Nextcloud blog here is spreading FUD on their partner which will likely cause more damage to them if OO's lawyer starts to have a look on this. People don't read license text, but they should, because they think AGPL is like GPL which is not the case, they are additional restrictions to the former.
2 replies →
An example of how european "tech" reacts to threats. 2 european open source projects in litigation with each other and one of them engineered a license to prevent an obvious feature of open source software (forking) while the other is throwing shades at opacity and geopolitical control at the first.
There is a section in the GitHub Readme of Eurooffice with a justification of the fork:
https://github.com/Euro-Office#euro-office-liberates-the-onl...
Only onlyoffice being petty. A good reason to use LibreOffice or Collabora instead.
Of course Collabora is also upset because LibreOffice resurrected their LibreOffice Online project (https://www.neowin.net/news/collabora-clashes-with-libreoffi...).
These projects seem to be really struggling with the Freedom part of Free Software.
Corporate dollars are zero sum, is why. It is in fact a real competition in that space.
Right? Kinda weird; I wonder what tiny pie it is that they think they're fighting over, and what makes any of these individual projects think that they're powerful enough over the others (not saying they might not be)
Hey mods/dang, can you put this back on the front page please? No reason to bounce it. Important licensing discussion and relevant!
They should have used malus.sh instead
Obviously.
Wow, how to alienate everyone.
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