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ONLYOFFICE accuses "Euro-Office" maker Nextcloud and IONOS of License Violation (www.onlyoffice.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Recently, IONOS and Nextcloud announced their new, sovereign office suite called “Euro-Office” and claimed they were using components of ONLYOFFICE. It seems they are doing so without checking the licences first and without cooperating with them.

Original announcement:

Nextcloud and Ionos are promising a modern, open-source office suite for the summer. To achieve this goal, they have forked OnlyOffice.

heise.de

ONLYOFFICE reply:

Based on publicly available information, the “Euro-Office” project uses technology derived from ONLYOFFICE editors in violation of our licensing terms and of international intellectual property law.

onlyoffice.com

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[–] 53 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (7 children)

From the blog:

ONLYOFFICE is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL v3)

And

preserving ONLYOFFICE branding in derivative works;

IDK seems to me it's not really GPL if you can't fork it, and that clause is certainly not compatible with any other GPL code.

If they use any GPL code they are probably in violation of that license.
Looks to me like they want to appear opensource, while keeping control of the code?

ensure a balance between openness of the code and protection of the rights of the copyright holder.

Yep there it is, this is completely contradictory to how GPL 3 works. You can't call it GPL3 and at the same time claim the copyright.
ONLYOFFICE is completely misunderstanding how AGPL works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_License

The main purpose of AGPL was to facilitate the use of GPL for online services, which wasn't really possible to make with older GPL versions, because they require distribution of the source code together with the software.

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  • [–] 35 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    You're misunderstanding the point of AGPL.

    Regular GPL software CAN be run over a network, but because the binary of the software isn't distributed - only an interface is provided to the software itself - the host isn't obligated to provide the source code. A lot of software hosts used this loophole to get around sharing their modifications to GPL licenced software, killing the main point.

    That's why AGPL was developed - to protect hosted software. AGPL requires the host to provide source to anyone who has access to the service, not just the binary.

    GPL - if I have the binary, I must be granted access to the source

    AGPL - if I can access the software, I must be granted access to the source

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    You can't call it GPL3 and at the same time claim the copyright.

    Weil you can (because you still own the copyright after giving your work that license), but you have given a legally binding promise to not impose additional restrictions so it won't do you any good to try

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    OK this is getting a bit hairy, but AFAIK only the creator of the GPL code maintains copyright, and can take his code to a closed source project.
    BUT the code that has been released as GPL remains open source, and cannot be made to be NOT open source.
    So anybody has a right to use it, as long as they keep it open source. So in the case of open source projects, it's academic that the creator of the code maintain the right to use it without the GPL conditions.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Yes, a creator can create a closed source copy (independent of the GPL'd work), assuming they have full ownership or permission from all contributors

    It's not fully academic only because it's common for companies to develop a GPL version and offer commercial licenses where the corporate customer is exempt

    But none of this affect the users of the GPL version, so most people don't care

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    assuming they have full ownership

    You are mixing things up, I'm not talking about the project, I was exclusively talking about the code someone had made personally.
    Linux for instance can never be made proprietary, because it's impossible to get permission from all developers.
    But anyone who has contributed a piece of code, can use that piece in other projects under different licenses. Because they retain copyright to their own code.

    So as I stated it is academic to the project, and it's especially academic to a fork of it.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    Yep there it is, this is completely contradictory to how GPL 3 works

    Judging by their repo tags, they use AGPL, MIT, and Apache, with one repo sitting under BSD. But your point stands.

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