Comment by AdmiralAsshat
5 days ago
If "forking without approval" is grounds for some kind of termination, then the project should probably not be considered truly "open source".
5 days ago
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.
I think you're claiming wrong stuff here. AGPLv3 section 7 paragraph b) expressively authorize the author to require an attribution in the derived work or copy. What Nextcloud did was to remove this attribution, so they actually mooted their own right to use the code under that license. There's nothing related to trademark or branding violation here. If OnlyOffice attacked Nextcloud for using their TM or brand for respecting the license, they would be debunked at a trial (if it even reach a trial), since they expressively allowed the use of the attribution in distributing their work with this license. Note: This license doesn't give you the right to use the branding of OnlyOffice on a derived product and claim it's yours or you're acting as them, that's a complete different usage case here.
5 replies →
I said "OnlyOffice is claiming" intentionally -- if it's BS then it's BS. I don't see anything in AGPLv3 that allows them to require branding, only attribution.
Still, you can (and often will) terminate a business partnership over BS arguments.
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.
> Just because you dislike a companies trajectory doesn't necessarily immediately allow you to terminate business relations.
Usually it does, barring contractual obligations otherwise
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> 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."
It's not even that -- OnlyOffice hasn't terminated anyone's license. It's more like: Linus allows me to fork Linux but he's not going to join a Zoom call with one my customers.
Shhh! Nobody tell Redhat.