OnlyOffice kills Nextcloud partnership for forking its project without approval

https://www.neowin.net/news/onlyoffice-suspends-nextcloud-partnership-over-unapproved-euro-office-fork/

37•bundie•1h ago

Comments

c-hendricks•49m ago

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.

bundie•46m ago

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...

cge•34m ago

>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.

zokier•16m ago

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...

X-Ryl669•3m ago

I think you're confused by the term "permissions". You can give more freedom to the license and a copier can remove them as long as it doesn't remove the freedom that are in AGPLv3. The OnlyOffice team claim comes from the next paragraph of section 7:

> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you add to a covered work, you may [...] supplement the terms of this License with terms:

> b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it; or c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from the original version; or

This is what they did and what the other part stripped from their blatant copy. So no, removing the logo or the OnlyOffice terms therefore seems forbidden by the license itself, revoking it for the other part, thus they are now making a counterfeit.

kleiba•32m ago

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

AdmiralAsshat•45m ago

If "forking without approval" is grounds for some kind of termination, then the project should probably not be considered truly "open source".

kube-system•27m ago

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

siruwastaken•24m ago

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.

kube-system•21m ago

> Just because you dislike a companies trajectory doesn't necessarily immediately allow you to terminate business relations.

Usually it does, barring contractual obligations otherwise

AdmiralAsshat•19m ago

> 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."

kube-system•16m ago

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.

slabity•11m ago

> 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.

kube-system•4m ago

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.

gunalx•31m ago

Only onlyoffice being petty. A good reason to use LibreOffice or Collabora instead.

scblock•29m ago

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.

jrm4•1m ago

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)

t0mas88•28m ago

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?

siruwastaken•26m ago

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.

MadVikingGod•12m ago

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...

formerly_proven•6m ago

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...

spacedoutman•3m ago

They should have used malus.sh instead