On April 15, the SPO Fund declared the ONLYOFFICE license incompatible with the AGPLv3 license. The dispute arose from a conflict surrounding the Euro-Office project—a European fork of the ONLYOFFICE package. In March 2026, the creators of Euro-Office removed several additional clauses from the AGPLv3 license that ONLYOFFICE had added in 2021. These clauses, in particular, required all derivative products to retain the original ONLYOFFICE logo. The developers of ONLYOFFICE considered the removal of these requirements a violation of the license and threatened legal action.
Krzysztof Siewicz, the lawyer for the SPO Fund, issued an official clarification siding with Euro-Office. He stated that ONLYOFFICE's additional requirements exceed what is permitted by AGPLv3.
Although section 7(b) of AGPLv3 allows for the addition of attribution requirements, the SPO Fund believes that the logo is an element of trademark and branding, rather than related to author attribution. The requirement to retain it is an unacceptable 'additional restriction.'
The key argument of the fund is found in section 7 of the AGPLv3 license, which grants users the right to remove any restrictions added beyond those specified in sections 7(a)-7(f). The actions of the Euro-Office creators are completely legal.
The SPO Fund emphasizes that if a project wants to add its own conditions, it can create its own license based on the AGPL. However, in such cases, it is prohibited to call it 'AGPL', as this misleads users regarding their actual rights.
The SPO Fund urged ONLYOFFICE to publicly and unequivocally state that their software is distributed under the standard AGPLv3 license and to confirm the right of all users to remove any 'additional restrictions' from the copies they receive. Otherwise, the fund reserves the right to take further measures to protect the principles of free software.
Source: linux.org.ru
