this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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56
ONLYOFFICE accuses "Euro-Office" maker Nextcloud and IONOS of License Violation (www.onlyoffice.com)
submitted 8 hours ago by zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 28 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (3 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.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 12 points 6 hours ago

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

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 4 points 7 hours ago

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

[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 hours 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.