‘Euro-Office’: OnlyOffice accuses of license violations

Ionos, Nextcloud and other partners are working together on an open-source office suite called ‘Euro-Office’, intended as a Microsoft alternative and to promote digital sovereignty. To this end, they are relying on the also open-source OnlyOffice, which they have forked for this purpose. After Euro-Office was announced last Friday, OnlyOffice is now speaking out – and accusing the young project of license violations.

In a blog post, OnlyOffice publicly expresses its anger. Euro-Office is using technology derived from OnlyOffice in violation of license terms and international intellectual property law. OnlyOffice is subject to the AGPL-v3 license (GNU Affero General Public License v3) and imposes further conditions to ensure transparency and appropriate source attribution. According to OnlyOffice, these include retaining the OnlyOffice trademarks in derivative works, providing appropriate source attribution to the original technology, and fully complying with open-source requirements for distributing the software.

Legal dispute

OnlyOffice quotes an unnamed lawyer who refers to Section 7 of the AGPL v3. According to this, copyright holders may expressly impose additional conditions, which in the case of OnlyOffice include the obligation to retain the original product logo (Section 7(b)) and the refusal of any rights to use the copyright holder's trademarks (Section 7(e)). These additions were made to the license on May 25, 2021, from line 655 onwards.

Arguments that derivative works may be distributed under a ‘pure’ AGPL-v3 license while additional conditions in Section 7 are removed are therefore legally unfounded. The AGPL v3 does not permit selective application; rather, it requires either acceptance in its entirety, including additional conditions, or does not grant usage rights to the software. “Characterizing such additional conditions as ‘unenforceable’ or ‘non-obligatory’ does not alter their legal nature,” adds the OnlyOffice lawyer.

Position of Ionos and Nextcloud

In response to an inquiry from heise online, Nextcloud states its position on the allegations: “As OnlyOffice itself states, its product is open source. Forks are a central part of the open-source ecosystem and are expressly intended to enable further development, adaptation, and also alternative governance models. The project has transparently documented the legal classification in the public repository.

This opinion is also shared by the Free Software Foundation, the guardian of the AGPL and GPL licenses. The legal situation was also discussed with Bradley M. Kuhn, the creator of the AGPL license, and he supports our legal assessment 100 percent.” Ionos replied to our inquiry that the company expressly supports this statement.

(dmk)