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.
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.
Finnish computer culture magazine Skrolli decided to move away from Google apps to a non-American solution. They evaluated Onlyoffice, but backed down when they found out that the company behind Onlyoffice is connected to Russia. You know, Russian control does put a little bit of a hamper on a plan of supposedly using sovereign open source EU software, yes.
…I’m not surprised that there are also other legal shenanigans going on.
Yeah Libre office and collabora seem like better options tbh
the obligation to retain the original product logo (Section 7(b));
the denial of any rights to use the copyright holder’s trademarks (Section 7(e)).
Uhhh is it just me or is it impossible to follow the first requirement without violating the second one? The logo requirement seems engineered to make sure that you can’t actually fork the project: if you include the original logo, they can hit you for trademark violation, and if you don’t include the logo they can say you violated their license terms.
That sounds like source-available, not open source.
Difference between Open Source and “open” source
This is “open” source and it was the main reason it got forked (lots of proprietary bits included as binary, impossible to send a PR, obfuscated code)
It’s “open” exclusively for marketing “our product is better because it’s open source” and mostly because in this way they can use GPL 3 code for libraries without paying for a different license
Fuck them
“Source available” is the accepted term. Without a legitimate well tested open source license, it isn’t free to distribute and therefore doesn’t meet the one of the 4 principles of open source.".
From the blog:
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.
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
TIL. Thanks for the explanation.
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
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.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
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.
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.
If IONOS is involved in anything I automatically assume they’re in the wrong. What a fucking scumbag of a predatory company. I made the mistake of using them for some web hosting and ended up being charged for extra contracts that you CANNOT CANCEL.
Fuck them I cancelled my debit card.
Okay that’s good to know, I’m looking for a new hosting service for my website and almost considered them
This is one of the exceptions to prove the rule
I did a cursory glance at their GitHub repos - all the ones that state the license terms of the repo are AGPL, Apache or MIT, with one exception - BSD.
So I don’t really get what “licensing terms” are being violated here.
The licensing terms of their feelings.
The AGPL license allows the license holder to specify additional terms of the license that require preservation of specified reasonable attributions or legal notices - this is covered in 7B, and the onlyoffice license specifies that the logo must be preserved for attribution.
Assuming a logo legally counts as reasonable attribution (IANAL) that would put only office in the right here, but holy shit, the fact that the license allows these modifications to be put on line #655 rather than line #2 is absurd. I, like most people I assume, only read far enough into the license to figure out whether it’s MIT or GPL
Their license also says they will not let anyone use their logo. So it doesn’t appear to be a reasonable attribution.
I don’t mind asset restriction and branding but with that, they should allow you to swap out assets and brand names. No freedom to distribute.
this what happens when being truly open source isn’t prioritised.
