To build an independent office suite, Euro‑Office’s IT consortium opted to base it on the existing open‑source solution OnlyOffice, which is released under the AGPL‑v3

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[–] 23 points 7 months ago (14 children)

The legal argument is a bit dubious and clearly in violation of the idea of the AGPL, but I guess this is something courts will have to settle.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    and clearly in violation of the idea of the AGPL

    Dunno how that could be since the idea of requiring attribution is specifically called out in Section 7, item B.

    I guess this is something courts will have to settle.

    Almost certainly true.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago

    Attribution isn't the problem. They try to circumvent the AGPL by making their trademarked logo part of the attribution, thus basically forbidding any of the rights people normally have under the AGPL.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    idea of requiring attribution is specifically called out in Section 7, item B.

    But requiring that the logo be retained is not.

    Now, it's not entirely clear what they even are asking for. If the ask is that the OnlyOffice logo be included in a 'credits' page (which is perhaps a reasonable interpretation of "you must retain the original Product logo when distributing the program") then it is much less problematic, although perhaps still beyond requiring attribution, than if they are trying to demand that, say, the favicon of the webapp must not be changed (especially if their intent is also to say that you can't distribute the program if you don't change the favicon because it would be a trademark violation).

    Now of course, if they have written all of OnlyOffice in house, and not had any external contributors or used any external copyleft code, then they can re-license OnlyOffice on whatever terms. If they were bound to the licence by including other people's AGPL contributions, then they have to follow the licence themselves, and cannot add arbitrary additional restrictions.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    I thought Europe already had case law surrounding this while the US have never taken it as far as courts and paid an undisclosed sum.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    In Europe I'm now aware of any common law or precedence law approaches so even if there'd be a case like you described (which I would be interested in!) it wouldn't have binding qualities for the bullshit that onlyoffice is pulling off.

    Dipshits.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    as a person with an american background who has absolutely no clue what he's talking about, IIRC if there's a long series of previous decisions it would still be very persuasive under civil law (jurisprudence constante). I cannot find any similar decisions either, though.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Oh yeahz you're right from what I know! Reference cases are used, at least in Germany, all the time, especially looking at the closing argument of the judgment itself (according to that one judge podcast I listen to which makes me an internet expert, doesn't it?).

    Good point!

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    wait which podcast is that that sounds interesting

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    What case are you referring to?

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