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FSF to OnlyOffice: You Can't Use the GNU (A)GPL to Take Software Freedom Away (fsf.org) 51

Posted by EditorDavid from the join-us-now dept.
Nextcloud joined a project to create a sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office called "Euro-Office". But after that project forked OnlyOffice, OnlyOffice suspended its partnership with Nextcloud. "They removed all references to our brand/attribute as required by our license," argued OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov on March 30th. ("The core issue here isn't just about what the AGPL license states, but about the additional provisions we, as the authors, have included... If the Euro-Office team believes our approach conflicts with the AGPLv3 license, we invite them to submit an official request to FSF for review.")

But this week the FSF responded (as "the steward of the GNU family of General Public Licenses"), criticizing OnlyOffice's "attempt to impose an additional restriction on the AGPLv3" and calling it "inconsistent with the freedoms granted by the license," in a blog post from FSF licensing/compliance manager Krzysztof Siewicz: It is possible to modify the (A)GPLv3 with additional terms, but only by adhering to the terms of the license... The (A)GPLv3 makes it clear that it permits all licensees to remove any additional terms that are "further restrictions" under the (A)GPLv3. It states, "[i]f the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term"...

We urge OnlyOffice to clarify the situation by making it unambiguous that OnlyOffice is licensed under the AGPLv3, and that users who already received copies of the software are allowed to remove any further restrictions. Additionally, if they intend to continue to use the AGPLv3 for future releases, they should state clearly that the program is licensed under the AGPLv3 and make sure they remove any further restrictions from their program documentation and source code. Confusing users by attaching further restrictions to any of the FSF's family of GNU General Public Licenses is not in line with free software.
"If FSF determines that our license and project align with AGPLv3, we will continue as an open-source initiative," OnlyOffice's CEO had written in March. "However, if the decision goes against us, we are ready to consider other options."

FSF to OnlyOffice: You Can't Use the GNU (A)GPL to Take Software Freedom Away More | Reply

FSF to OnlyOffice: You Can't Use the GNU (A)GPL to Take Software Freedom Away

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  • This is like (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday April 18, 2026 @11:47AM (#66100066)

    having a tantrum and threatening to pick up your bat and ball and go home. Except there are other bats and balls already laying around. Identical ones even. This seems like a completely self-destroying empty threat. If OnlyOffice goes closed source it doesn't matter, there is already a fork for the wider community to continue working on even in a capacity that may be funded by Nextcloud or similar organisations.

    • Yep. OnlyOffice wants their hosting money. They want control. They're the assholes.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Yep. OnlyOffice wants their hosting money. They want control. They're the assholes.

        Maybe that's true, but I'm not getting that from the summary. What I'm getting is:

        • OnlyOffice spent a decade developing their office code, distributing code that they authored under a modified AGPL license that requires attribution to be preserved.
        • EuroOffice removed the attribution.

        If EuroOffice removed attribution requirements only on code that was created by someone else other than OnlyOffice, and did not use the code authored by OnlyOffice, then they're fine. But I think courts have already ruled that t

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "...there is already a fork for the wider community to continue working on even in a capacity that may be funded by Nextcloud or similar organisations."

      So? That doesn't mean that any such work would be valuable. And it doesn't matter that a fork already exists, a fork could be made tomorrow. Closing source code does not remove the existence of previous open source code.

      What matters is who is doing the work, and what the quality of that work is. Absolutely none of this is concerned with what matters, only

      • Indeed. Welcome to my point. A large portion of open source development is a community driven effort. Closing the source doesn't remove the open source, it removes the community.

        We have ample evidence of multiple projects that have gone down this path and have all cratered as a result while their forks have thrived. The ball game will continue even if one player throws a tantrum.

    • It's good that we are beyond the endless debates and angst of the "protester lifestyle class" license advocates and other open source software advocates.

      We can focus on getting to the important tasks of building an open source idiot developer proof router OS image and replacing other known perpetual security risk software.

    • From what I have followed, all they seem to want is that their role in creating this software not be erased by removing their credits from the original source code. That's something that even the BSDL requires.

      Maybe OnlyOffice could re-license their software under the BSDL or Apache licenses, so that they don't get stabbed in the back by the FSF

  • If your goal was to enforce additional restrictions on any future forked works (or prevent others from forking altogether), you shouldn't have used an open source license at all, you fucking dolts. GPL/AGPL literally exists to prevent further restrictions and always has, and I think everyone at the company knows that. If they wanted to pretend to be open source and enforce their license additions, then they should have written their own.

    OnlyOffice's CEO, Lev Bannov, is a fucking moron who is wrong, knows he

    • AGPL:

      7. Additional Terms.

      [...]

      Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:

      [...]

      b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it; or

      [...]

      All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10

      (emphasis mine)

      OpenOffice license includes:

      Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License you must retain the original Product logo when distributing the program.

      So there is an actual subtle question here - does "original Product logo" count as "reasonable legal notices or author attributions" within the meaning of AGPL 7(b)? But hey, who wants to read when the accused others of no reading?!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Be careful here, OpenOffice and OnlyOffice, while they both start with O, are entirely separate products written (and administrated) by different people.

        This is rather odd, as most companies want their official branding REMOVED from derivative works, with attribution in source code or provided in written legal notices.

        Defining a logo as a legal notice is a rather significant departure from anyone else I've seen try to use the AGPL.

        • Oops, I think this was a typo or autocorrect error - but I was citing the correct OnlyOffice license.
        • To respond to the actual point - requiring an authorship notice is clearly allowed. Requiring that it be in a specific graphical form - seems to me like way too far. But I also did not like how FSF dismissed it as completely disallowed, without any acknowledgement that a less onerous/ less specific authorship acknowledgement would have been clearly OK - dudes, you are the ones that included a list of allowed restrictions, do not now act as if it's absolutely preposterous to consider that any restrictions mi

          • FSF is responding to this:

            Can I remove ONLYOFFICE logo or change it to my own?
            According to Section 7 of the GNU Affero General Public License v.3 (AGPL v.3) we're permitted to supplement terms of this License requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices. Using this permission we do not allow you to remove the original ONLYOFFICE logo from ONLYOFFICE products and components or change it to your own one. The interactive user interfaces in modified source and object code versions of the Program must display Appropriate Legal Notices, as required under Section 5 of the GNU AGPL version 3. To discuss any co-branding issues feel free to write to our sales department at sales@onlyoffice.com.

            ( from https://www.onlyoffice.com/lic... [onlyoffice.com] )

            Not the idea of requiring attributions.

            As OnlyOffice wrote that, it is clearly an attempt at a disallowed further restriction. FSF isn't speaking toward authorship attributions in general. They are speaking to that. And that was an egregious overreach attempting to use the license as a restrictive weapon. "You can't use this anywhere that changes our logo and if you want to then you have to pay us" is not what free software or softwar

            • The FSF is not a court and has not authority here. Falsa demonstratio non nocet.

              Contracts are generally not copyrightable in Europe, I wonder if the AGPL would qualify as a copyrightable work.

              • OnlyOffice is specifically using the AGPL as written by FSF, so FSF's interpretation of the license, while perhaps not legally binding, is germane. It's worth noting, however, that it is not possible to modify and redistribute OnlyOffice and comply with their interpretations. They claim that it is a requirement to maintain their logo to comply with legal notice and attribution requirements, but also disallow use of their trademarks, which includes their logo.
            • Interesting, did not see that. So that are claiming the logo is a legal notice, not an attribution? That seems to me like a much more obvious overreach than when I thought they were [ab]using the permission to require attribution.
              • They seem to somewhat waffle on that. Their FAQ calls it a legal notice, but in some of their communications, they refer to it as attribution. It's worth noting that they do have conflicting terms. They claim that by paragraph 7(b) they can insist that you maintain their logo, but they also use 7(e) to deny use of their trademarks. They state several places they are open source, not FOSS, but they are trying to have it both ways by claiming a FOSS license.

            • ....They are speaking to that. And that was an egregious overreach attempting to use the license as a restrictive weapon. "You can't use this anywhere that changes our logo and if you want to then you have to pay us" is not what free software or software freedoms are about.

              Attributions are one thing. Trying to use the license to require that certain functionality remain is another.

              I know that RMS had been kicked out as the head of the FSF, but one point he always made about the word "Free" in "free software" was the "libre, not gratis" argument: people are allowed to sell free software. Once one allows that, one can't claim that a seller can't have a tiered pricing structure, if you will, where the price is $X if one uses the software w/ the license as-is, vs $(X+Y) if one wants to change the terms of the license

              I know that the FSF likes throwing its weight around, but it might w

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

            Logos and branding are neither a Legal Notice nor author attribution. But that isn't even what this is really about. The real problem is OnlyOffice added restrictive language to the license and then said while referencing the added language "per the AGPLv3...". No, not per the AGPLv3, it's per OnlyOffice's extra terms. That's like adding chocolate chips to vanilla ice cream and then trying to claim it's still just regular vanilla ice cream - no it's not.

            Lev Bannov is trying to play the innocent imbecile who

            • I am not a lawyer, and I am definitely not their lawyer, but if I had to defend their position, there can be made an argument that logo (that mostly just says "ONLYOFFICE" with a small image) is just the author attribution - and the AGPL does not explicitly specify whether the authorship attribution requirement might require a specific format for the attribution. But earlier in this thread Excelcia cited OnlyOffice as using the required legal notices as justification, and to me that's an obviously unjustifi

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

                I am not a lawyer, and I am definitely not their lawyer, but if I had to defend their position, there can be made an argument that logo (that mostly just says "ONLYOFFICE" with a small image) is just the author attribution

                At best, the only author attribution that would be needed would be that SOMEWHERE they state this was forked from OnlyOffice at some point. If the OnlyOffice code has specific author attributions (i.e. "contributed by John Smith"), they would probably also have to keep that unless they significantly reworked, or removed, that code.

                it is disingenuous to imply that the CEO would have known he is obviously wrong if he just read enough of the license to realize it disallows all additional restrictions

                No. It's really not. He knew better, decided to get away with it as long as he can, and then just pivot to closed source as soon as someone makes a (legit) fuss. I know this is tr

              • The problem is that they also restrict you from using their trademarks. It seems you are both supposed to use their branding and prohibited from doing so.

        • Defining a logo as a legal notice is a rather significant departure from anyone else I've seen try to use the AGPL.

          This is reminiscent of Sega v. Accolade. Do they have published requirements for the use of their logo? In which case this license requirement would be an attempt to graft those terms onto the AGPL?

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