Several European companies and organizations, including Nextcloud, IONOS, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian, and BTactic, have unveiled an open source collaborative document editing platform, Euro-Office, based on the codebase of the ONLYOFFICE office suite. The fork has undergone a rebranding, and the AGPLv3 license has been amended to remove additional terms regarding the logo and trademarks. ONLYOFFICE developers have deemed these changes a license violation and have called for immediate remediation.
Since 2021, the AGPLv3 license, under which the ONLYOFFICE code is distributed, includes additional terms clarifying the AGPL's requirements regarding attribution and the absence of trademark obligations. These additional terms require that derivative works retain the original ONLYOFFICE logo to maintain brand recognition. The license addendum also specifies that there is no obligation to grant rights to ONLYOFFICE's trademarks.
The creators of the Euro-Office fork have removed additional requirements and contact information for Ascensio System from the license text, leaving only a note regarding the license for resources used in the graphical interface and a disclaimer. This change is justified by the inclusion in Section 7 of the AGPLv3 of the right to remove additional restrictions beyond those specified in Sections 7(a)-7(f).
Specifically, the addition regarding the preservation of the logo has been removed, as Section 7(b) of the AGPL allows for attribution, but the logo is a trademark and brand element not directly related to the author's attribution. The reference to the trademark waiver has been removed, as it does not affect the licensee's rights or obligations (Section 7(e) already states that AGPLv3 does not grant trademark rights). The contact address has been removed, as it is for informational purposes only (AGPLv3 does not require the preservation of contact information in the text).
The lawyers advising the ONLYOFFICE project consider the assertion that a derivative work can be distributed under a "pure" AGPLv3 license without the additional terms imposed by Section 7 to be legally unfounded. They argue that, under established intellectual property law, the right to create and distribute derivative works derives solely from the rights granted by the license, and such rights are transferred indivisibly.
The creation of a derivative work does not allow the use of an independent licensing regime free from the terms under which the original code was derived. This means that the ONLYOFFICE fork must be distributed only in accordance with all license terms, including any additional clauses. The interpretation of paragraph 7(b) of the AGPL and the extension of "attribution" to the logo are controversial in the current situation. The Free Software Foundation believes that, except in specific cases, the logo does not fall within the scope of attribution and legal notices permitted by paragraph 7(b).
Euro-Office is presented as an open, transparently developed, and independent platform for collaborative work with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The project is designed for web use and integration with third-party products, such as file sharing systems, wikis, and project management tools. It is noted that the fork was created as a necessary measure due to the inability to join ONLYOFFICE development for the following reasons:
- The difficulty of submitting changes to the ONLYOFFICE platform's codebase is significant, as developers don't review submitted changes, don't accept pull requests, and don't ensure build instructions are correct and up-to-date.
- The company behind ONLYOFFICE periodically makes controversial decisions, such as disabling editing in the mobile app and removing the admin panel.
- Lack of transparency: commit texts often reference internal issue tracking systems, and the release includes binary blobs and obfuscated code. Some code comments are in Russian, making it difficult for international teams to work with the code.
- The mobile application is not fully open and relies on proprietary components.
- A significant portion of ONLYOFFICE's developers are located in Russia, which complicates collaboration and undermines trust due to the political situation, especially when development processes are opaque and isolated.
Source: opennet.ru
