What do you think about OnlyOffice-EuroOffice fight?

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hugthispanda@reddit

If the 'further restrictions' of AGPLv3 section 7 doesn't hold, it would set a bad precedent.

Anyone with a trademarked logo can then release a project under AGPLv3, and add a restriction to require display of that trademark.

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araujoms@reddit

They could just write their own license that disallows forking. I don't see what is the point of messing with AGPL

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It would very quickly (and probably already will) lead to an AGPL v3.1 or v4 to prevent this situation from happening again. Just like Tivo's and Microsoft's shenanigans lead to the creation of GPL v3.

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Leniwcowaty@reddit

Don't forget, that OnlyOffice requires you to display the trademark, while at the same time prohibiting you from using their trademark. It's contradictory.

That's why FSF said, that these conditions are void, and don't have to be followed.

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librepotato@reddit

Onlyoffice was not adhering to the spirit of the AGPL and the FSF confirmed it.

I don't think they are a bad company or bad people. They have business interests they have to protect. They did not go about it the right way and now are paying for it.

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gromain@reddit

Well, they are a bad company. To do what they are doing is going against the spirit of open source, the same very spirit that allowed them to create a fork in the first place. It's quite telling when you rake something for free, monetize it and then try to prevent others from distributing the same thing for free.

First class a-holes.

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araujoms@reddit

What did they take for free? As far as I know OnlyOffice wrote everything themselves, it wasn't a fork of any other project.

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Distinct-Temp6557@reddit

Onlyoffice has ties to Russia. Fuck them.

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TURBOKAN@reddit

Does the origin matters if the software itself is good anyways?

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dreamscached@reddit

Of course it doesn't. Don't listen to Reddit lunatics.

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AllieCat_Meow@reddit

This is so naive, you don't think an autocratic government like Russia's would be able if they so desired to coerce them into adding something malicious?

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notenglishwobbly@reddit

Has Russia ever sabotaged an entire supply line in order to commit a terrorist attack on the scale of an entire country, maiming and killing countless innocents and making it clear to the world that they will murder you using tech against you as long as it serves their interests?

Just checking because I've never heard of it.

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Irverter@reddit

You're aware that Russia used the 2008 olympics to invade a country, right?

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Portbragger2@reddit

no but i know a country that did.

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chmod_7d20@reddit

Have you been living under a rock?

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Distinct-Temp6557@reddit

Yes? Multiple times between Ukraine, Georgia, etc. That's not even mentioning their digital terrorism and their partnering with terroristic regimes.

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DifficultDerek@reddit

I agree, and not to mention the reason EuroOffice exists is due to the concept of digital sovereignty. Ironically, not spurred by a Russian software suite - but by American ones.

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dreamscached@reddit

Sure, why wouldn't they try? Isn't that why this stuff is open source, so that everyone can spot it?

You guys look for malice in the wrong place.

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Scheeseman99@reddit

Supply chain attacks can and usually do happen on FOSS projects, but also OnlyOffice is filled with opaque binary blobs. Given the software's purpose is to work with documents which can contain security critical information, it's also a high value attack vector. Don't be an idiot.

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

You can't force someone to do something in a fork, if they tried coersion eurooffice will just stop existing.

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Irverter@reddit

And North Korean software definetely doesn't have any spyware.

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DifficultDerek@reddit

Red Star OS FTW! :D

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LiftingRecipient420@reddit

Yes, it does.

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MaybeTheDoctor@reddit

It does if certain function can only be done using openoffices cloud services. Other comment mention mail merge being one.

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CrazyKilla15@reddit

What does that have to do with OnlyOffice though?

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berryer@reddit

For pre-existing versions which have already been vetted by third-parties, no. For future versions, it means that those third-party audits are increasingly critical, because governments can threaten their citizens into being an attack vector.

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wektor420@reddit

Yes, because it can be used as an attack vector for sabotage and spying

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notenglishwobbly@reddit

Might want to look into the crimes perpetrated by Europeans - to this day still aiding and financing an active genocide - and the Americans because I bet you use American products and services.

If that's reason to not use a solid open source product, you know...

It's going to be a tough discovery. Get ready to remove some repos.

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DifficultDerek@reddit

It is possible to be anti-imperialism and anti-genocide universally, you know. It shouldn't be a competition to see who is the most egregious. Call them all out.

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Distinct-Temp6557@reddit

Which "genocide" would that be, exactly?

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Gooooomi@reddit

and reddit is american yet you still use it

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Miserable-Potato7706@reddit

Let me know when Euro Reddit releases and I'll switch.

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Gooooomi@reddit

There’s already lemmy

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4lc4tr4y@reddit

Sadly but the same

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Gooooomi@reddit

literally built as a decentralised replacement for reddit

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4lc4tr4y@reddit

Technically yes, but the networking effect is kicking.

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Epsilon_void@reddit

He doesn't want a solution, he wants to be angry.

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notenglishwobbly@reddit

So what you're essentially saying is that you understand that you can differentiate between the people who make a product and the government that rules the country they live in?

But you can't for Russians? Why, because they're an inferior race or something?

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MrCorporateEvents@reddit

Europe chose to rely on American software for decades and now they’re crying even they could have been building out their own stuff this whole time.

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Miserable-Potato7706@reddit

Well, prior to Trump there wasn’t much reason not to. America had a good relationship with Europe for decades and it was unlikely to change.

It’s only now, when we live in a world where a mentally unwell old man holds a worrying amount of power, that distancing ourselves almost seems like a necessity.

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theredwolf43@reddit

It's racism. You may argue the license policy is bad or invalid (I am not a lawyer) however using nationality as a argument is just racism.

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Distinct-Temp6557@reddit

Nationality isn't a race.

You're thinking of xenophobia.

And in Russia's case, it's warranted.

Just ask Ukraine or Georgia.

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Masterflitzer@reddit

so does nginx and many other software, entirely irrelevant tho

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FriendlyKillerCroc@reddit

You might as well stop using all software except what you write yourself then, fool.

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Zatujit@reddit

they were not adhering neither to the spirit or the letter of the AGPL

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

The letter of AGPL doesn't mean much in Russia recently, since they don't even respect copyright of "hostile countries". And that includes the text of AGPL itself, thus allowing unattributed alterations for domestic use.

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LiftingRecipient420@reddit

Okay, and?

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froschdings@reddit

Well I don't think EU courts will decide against common interpretation of open source licenses just to benefit russian companies that try to withdraw an opensource license

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mrlinkwii@reddit

Onlyoffice was not adhering to the spirit of the AGPL and the FSF confirmed it.

the spirit of a license means nothing the wording dose

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DigitalChrono@reddit

Libreoffice or Microsoft Office is my opinion.

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T8ert0t@reddit

Softmaker is a better product from a better European business.

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Proper-Lab-2500@reddit (OP)

but it's not even free. If I liked Demoware software, I would have stayed in windows

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F_n_o_r_d@reddit

Stupid. But I'm not a developer or a corporation. 🤷‍♂️

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Own-Replacement8@reddit

Great, another FOSS schism. This will certainly allow dedicating resources to improving the software.

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thephotoman@reddit

I don’t.

Realistically, I don’t use office suites much. While they’re lovely tools for the jobs they do, those aren’t jobs I do very often.

If I really care about styling text, I’ll use HTML, XML, LaTeX, or Markdown. All of those keep the files I work with as plain text, allowing me to grep and sed and awk them.

If I care about making presentations, which happens exactly once a year when I give interns a crash course on Git, I will usually reject slideshows. Your presentation note cards are not a visual aide.

As for spreadsheets, there are better programming languages. I’m a software engineer by trade. I can usually get by with a CSV and a lot of Python.

I don’t suggest that you, gentle reader, do any of these things. It’s a wonkish workflow for a man who cut his teeth on personal computers in the 1980’s, before GUIs became normal, before WYSIWYG, before most modern conveniences became a thing.

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georgehank2nd@reddit

Grep and sed and awk… and mercurial (or git, if you're one of the masses).

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NanderTGA@reddit

What's the advantage anyway? I recall looking up the differences and a mercurial dev responded on stackoverflow saying that they have the same concepts although mercurial apparently has a better alternative to force pushing. Oh and for whatever reason google and meta developed their own things based off mercurial to improve scalability and workflow. And then jj was inspired by those, which you can host on git repositories? Yeah time to dig into that again.

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jinks@reddit

If I care about making presentations, which happens exactly once a year when I give interns a crash course on Git, I will usually reject slideshows. Your presentation note cards are not a visual aide.

For the rest there is LaTeX-Beamer.

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shwaamon@reddit

I hope, as usual, some day someone can do almost perfect docx and xlsx compatibility, so I can ditch Office and Windows on my work laptop.

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OrthodoxCrusader681@reddit

Just use an older version of word like 2010

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msanangelo@reddit

why should we have to use Word in Wine to open a docx file when we can have a native program do it?

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shwaamon@reddit

Yeah my workplace are all Office 365 people. There's files being passed around in docx and excels in xlsx that if opened in Libre or Only or GDocs, then worked on and saved, then opened in 365 again, will cause all kinds of hell. I've lost up to 6 months' worth of work one time due to formatting, luckily I keep backups that mitigated the damage, but man I did not sleep that night.

So in the specific use case scenario like mine, I can't afford formatting issues. We should of course just use google docs, enforce one format (like odt or docx) and a specific gdrive folder just for passing files around, which would eliminate most of all troubles, but people would really rather just pass around files using whatsapp and in old word and excel formats. All of which isn't a problem if I just took the hit and used Office 365.

Also CUPS hates my printer.

Work is the last microsoft hurdle in my life and it's such a BIG gripe of mine. I hope EuroOffice would drift farther away from its OnlyOffice roots and EU will successfully force bigh tech around document formatting the way they forced big tech into USB-C.

I really, really do not mind Libreoffice's UI. I don't think the "tabbed" setting is ugly at all. But oh the formatting woes. The boxes and cells and letterheads that refuse to align and data and formulas that go missing. Once there was even a phantom page that only showed up when printing.

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NanderTGA@reddit

The printing functionality in Libreoffice is indeed pretty broken. Usually when printing something in a random application, it opens the system's print dialog. Libreoffice has its own. That doesn't support printing on both sides of a piece of paper. When the system's dialog can do it just fine. Yeah I wish I realized earlier I should have exported to pdf and then printed that instead.

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OrthodoxCrusader681@reddit

Because those native programmes suck

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msanangelo@reddit

they're fine for what they do. OnlyOffice is the only one we have with near perfect compatibility. It's a shame the Open Source Community Projects like that act like children who can't get along.

Just set the license in accordance to how you want your code handled and move on. I can't stand when projects fork over minor, pointless differences. Just makes me ignore the fork too.

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OrthodoxCrusader681@reddit

For some reason only office was really laggy for me so I didn't have the best experience

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hongooi@reddit

The problem is when other people send you documents created with newer versions of the software. Even if your entire org uses a particular version, you can have people from outside sending you incompatible stuff.

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

Perfect compatibility with the standard would mean broken compatibility with Microsoft Office. There is no middle ground. Different editions have unique quirks and tonnes of legacy code to explicitly support the old variants, too.

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FryBoyter@reddit

To the best of my knowledge, Ascensio System SIA has no right to modify the AGPL in such a way that forks are only permitted if its logo is used. Especially since Ascensio System SIA does not authorize the use of the logo.

In my opinion, Ascensio System SIA did this intentionally to present OnlyOffice as open source, which worked wonderfully until the fork. However, I believe the change to the AGPL was intended to deliberately prevent a fork. Presumably, the developers of OnlyOffice simply did not anticipate that a fork would occur at all in such a project.

As a LibreOffice user, I will therefore either switch to Euro-Office or stick with LibreOffice. OnlyOffice is out of the question for me. Besides the unlawful change to the AGPL, there are other reasons for this decision. For instance, to create mail merges, you have to use the online version of OnlyOffice. This means you have to upload the data required for the mail merges from a spreadsheet to the operator’s portal (https://helpcenter.onlyoffice.com/docs/userguides/document_editor/UseMailMerge.aspx). Why? With LibreOffice, all of this works locally.

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silenceimpaired@reddit

Isn’t EuroOffice not going to be local only?

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SuAlfons@reddit

Governments run clouds nowadays to . Euro-Office is supposed to connect to the Office part of a defined cloud stack compised of FOSS components.

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georgehank2nd@reddit

Ah, their "trick" (or what they thought was their trick) is that forks must use their logos, but no-one has the right to use their logos. So, they tried to use build a Catch-22. And failed.

And if they really think they're right, let them sue. Which they won't.

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The-ComradeCommissar@reddit

Ascensio System SIA has no right to modify the AGPL in such a way that forks are only permitted if its logo is used. Especially since Ascensio System SIA does not authorize the use of the logo.

That's delving into legal shenanigans; that may add extra clauses that only people born under the full moon may use their software... however, AGPL explicitly allows forks to nullify any additional clauses... so it is pointless.

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DoubleOwl7777@reddit

OnlOffice violated the AGPL. simple as that. they have zero ground to stand on.

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onlysubscribedtocats@reddit

They didn't violate the AGPL. They are wrongfully enforcing it. This is a pedantic comment, but I think it's important.

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Scheeseman99@reddit

The license is infringing, which makes any distribution that packages the license infringing, which makes all distribution infringing.

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Zatujit@reddit

At most they would be infringing AGPL trademark

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Scheeseman99@reddit

FSF own the copyright of the text of license itself and use of it in contingent of conditions that OnlyOffice is violating. It's not a trademark issue, it's a copyright issue.

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Zatujit@reddit

But it literally says "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.".

I don't think the FSF could just sue someone for sharing a piece of text even if they have the copyright since they literally say anyone can share it. I can share freely the AGPL license text, it doesn't have to even apply to any program... And I don't think they even literally modify the text.

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onlysubscribedtocats@reddit

That is not what one typically means with 'to violate a licence'.

I don't want to split hairs on this.

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Scheeseman99@reddit

It is technically what they're doing though and the practical implications re: the legality of the project are basically the same. Everyone who is distributing Onlyoffice is violating FSF's copyright.

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

Have they? If they operate in legal systems when it's not possible to violate AGPL, then they didn't. The real concern is why the international community is interested in what they share.

I mean, many distro maintainers instantly recognized it and consistently keep it away, so users go for flatpaks and the like. But it should be recognized as a red flag it is, and yet, it's kinda popular.

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EverythingsBroken82@reddit

If they did not violate the AGPL, then they also cannot claim to be under their protection. You cannot pick and choose. Either you put yourself under a foreign law and accept it as a whole, as far as possible... or that's it. that would break every legal assumption on international law otherwise.

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

They are full of shit of course, but that's legal in their place as well

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TropicalAudio@reddit

It's practically required to be full of shit in their local jurisdiction, because publicly admitting that the "special military operation" is actually a war of aggression is literally illegal there.

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fellipec@reddit

Trying to use a logo or trademark to block FOSS is a dick move.

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ActivityIcy4926@reddit

Note that ONLYOFFICE has changed their tone recently, and is not focused on license attribution rather than the logo. They claim Euro-Office doesn't give proper credit.

Which is kind of ironic, since ONLYOFFICE is wildly inconsistent with marking code as AGPL to begin with.

And ONLYOFFICE has a certain interpretation of AGPL (of course they do) that makes them believe Euro-Office should plaster ONLYOFFICE credits all over their application (which AGPL does not require).

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tukanoid@reddit

Barely ever use office suites, its either markdown or typst for me if I don't have docx requirement and can get away with generating pdfs. If I need to visualize some data in charts - code + plotting libs, rerun for realtime.

But imo, from what I gather, OO is in the wrong for ab/mis-using the license and effectively "preventing" forks, trying to be smartasses about it.

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Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit

Both sides are wrong.

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Dramatic_Mastodon_93@reddit

So wtf do I use? Only, Euro or Libre?

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georgehank2nd@reddit

Only and Euro are not comparable to Libre. Libre is offline, Only and Euro are online, "cloud".

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Oerthling@reddit

That is incorrect.

Via Collabora LO also is available online. Has been for years and used with NextCloud.

And LO just reactivated its own open LOOL project, because of the increased interest (and no doubt fresh money being channeled via various states and institutions to gain more independence from MSO).

As a result there is some drama between the LO project and the commercial Collabora.

We'll see how that shakes out.

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Oerthling@reddit

LO, obviously.

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Dramatic_Mastodon_93@reddit

i thought i read that development stopped

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TURBOKAN@reddit

You're probably confusing it with OpenOffice

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Dramatic_Mastodon_93@reddit

idk there was like some drama with a company that contributed to it

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jinks@reddit

Employees of Collabora, which does about 1/3rd of all LO development, were thrown out of the Document Foundation Steering Committee because government watchdogs saw a conflict of interest with those employees heading a non-profit NGO.

The whole thing was badly organized communicated to Collabora before the Foundation pulled the trigger and Collabora was pissed.

Right now the company is publicly questioning whether it makes sense for them to put time and money into a project when they don't have any say in how it gets developed.

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Dramatic_Mastodon_93@reddit

so i was right

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ThePhyseter@reddit

Why dont they just use LibreOffice? I dont get it

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Proper-Lab-2500@reddit (OP)

i think because of old looking ui and on some distros colors mismatch. some files doesn't open the same as msoffice as well

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FineWolf@reddit

The AGPL is very clear, all additional restrictions are null and void.

You can claim to be open-source, and then add conditions to the licence to prevent people from forking.

Euro-Office is entirely in their right, and I'm looking forward to using their fork.

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Klutzy-Condition811@reddit

The thing is, this could make the entire license invalid in some jurisdictions (hard to tell, the agpl itself tries to prevent it but it does make it legally ambiguous in some places), meaning it's possible if they have terms that violate the (A)GPL, then the entire (A)GPL is invalid. Would be interesting to see it litigated to be clear lol.

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0xe1e10d68@reddit

I don’t see why this would make the AGPL entirely invalid, although I can’t speak for all jurisdictions; and I don’t see the AGPL as being that ambiguous on the topic. Just because not everything is exactly defined in the license itself does not make it ambiguous; or make branding a Legal Notice or author attribution.

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xNaXDy@reddit

At least for Germany, if a contract contains something that would cause it to become partially void (e.g. because a clause is unenforcable), then the entire contract is void (German source: https://dejure.org/gesetze/BGB/139.html ), unless there exists a clause in the contract to account for this, something like "if a clause in this contract is found to be void, other clauses remain unaffected".

The AGPLv3 has something similar:

[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.

To me, it would seem that, at least in Germany, OnlyOffice is pure AGPLv3, but that'll be for the lawyers to figure out.

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progandy@reddit

There are two ways it could go:

1) The code is still AGPL licensed and you can remove that invalid term 2) As the AGPL was incorrectly applied, the license grant was never valid and nobody has any rights to use OnlyOffice under that "pseudo-AGPL" license. The copyright holders need to offer the program with a new license.

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aew3@reddit

I don’t see how this could have wider implications for the AGPL beyond this project.
If it invalidated the entire license it would do so only for this project. If so, that would indeed raise questions here pertaining to a fork. If the license is invalidated would it revert to all rights reserved to contributors? Which would be a very messy case if any significant contributions are present that wasn’t made under a CLA or an employee of the company that backs the project.

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Klutzy-Condition811@reddit

The AGPLv3 specifically says "All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If 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.", so if the AGPL is "king" in this case Onlyoffice has no leg to stand on.

However that's not the view of onlyoffice of course.

If other people contributed under the assumption and terms of AGPL and no CLA that does make things more in favor of Eurooffice you'd think potentially in some ways, though again it could be like the minecraft bukkit/craftbukkit project and could make it all potentially invalid, though that was a derivative of a clearly all rights reserved project to start with.

Messy either way glad it's not my potential lawsuit lol.

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jorgejhms@reddit

I don't know how it works on Anglo-Saxon jurisdiction but in continental law system judges have to take into account the "spirit of the law" in their ruling. So in that case, AGLP spirit is yo be open, son contradictory clauses added that contradict the spirit would be nulled by default

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ProKn1fe@reddit

They do not prevent to fork but follow what in license asks to do for fork.

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sascha-isagirlname@reddit

That's what they say, but if you follow their logic you only have these 3 options: - Fork the project and use the only office branding => Copyright violation - Fork the project and don't use only office branding => They claim it violates their additional clause in their AGPL - Fork the project in private, but you can't distribute it

Neither of these are compatible with the spirit and (IANAL) the letter of the AGPL.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Fork the project in private, but you can't distribute it

Actually no.

EuroOffice is build as a alternative to Google docs or MS Office (the browser version) they aren't distributing It

AGPL was created to solve an issue. If you create a GPLv3 software on a server (for transparency or freedom or whatever) and you moddify It and use the moddified version, then people is technically using a closed source version of the software (running on your server). To solve this issues and ensure GPL can not be closed even when running locally, AGPL was created. Even if your software run locally, if people connects to your server to use It, you are tied to the license. Thats why AGPL was created and it's why privacy focused projects that run on servers (like Signal) use It

Without AGPL, EuroOffice could just continue to use the software as It runs on their servers, with AGPL + propietary restrictions, their fork has some issues

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onlysubscribedtocats@reddit

AGPL + propietary restrictions

This isn't a thing.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

It's literally what onlyOffice does

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onlysubscribedtocats@reddit

And it's not a thing. It's like saying 'darkness with added light'. It wouldn't be dark anymore if there were light.

The AGPL forbids additional restrictions, and the FSF's copyright forbids modification of the licence text itself. It's just not possible to have 'AGPL + proprietary restrictions'. It's not a thing. They can try, but the licence explicitly forbids it.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

They are literally adding clauses to control the hability to fork the project under APGL, again, It's what they do. Thats why they are being sued and GNU already talked about the situation

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Silly-Freak@reddit

Fork the project and use the only office branding => Copyright violation

Trademark violation ;) the copyright violation is what follows from violating additional clauses (were they effective) and subsequently not being granted a license

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D0nkeyHS@reddit

Using a modified version of the license but still calling it that is obviously shitty , but I don't get how terms in the original license would apply.

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jonathancast@reddit

Using the original terms means including the term 'you may ignore any additional restrictions outside the text of this license document' as part of the overall license grant.

And OnlyOffice's additional restrictions are very carefully worded to not override anything in the AGPL in turn.

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w2qw@reddit

They don't use a modified license they use the original license and then add additional terms.

Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License you must retain the original 
Product logo when distributing the program. Pursuant to Section 7(e) we
decline to grant you any rights under trademark law for use of our
trademarks.

Where 7(b) is 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

If that term doesn't fit under 7b) then it would be invalid.

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AgarwaenCran@reddit

its a catch 22:

if you want to fork onlyoffice, you need to use their logo and shit. but you are also not allowed to use their trademarks and so on, which includes their logo.

what they did there is a way to make it appear as if they would be open while actually not being open. bunch of assholes. especially, as others have already linked/mentioned, such additional restrictions to this license are null and void. so, in other words, fuck the people behind only office

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git-vomit@reddit

Anyone can just download the code, delete/replace the images and upload it.

There's no need to use the fork button

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fantomas_666@reddit

It's not about the fork button, it's about what it does - creates a copy of the software

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getbusyliving_@reddit

Couldn't care less

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Zdrobot@reddit

Do not use OnlyOffice

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whatThePleb@reddit

One is russian spyware (onlyoffice), the other isn't.

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Tutorbin76@reddit

Serious question, why would anyone want to use these products over the default LibreOffice?

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burimo@reddit

I don't think about it, I just use libreoffice

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asp174@reddit

Different use case.

Libeoffice can't be used on nextcloud for example.

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Oerthling@reddit

That's a funny comment - given that Collabora Online, which is the online office used in nextcloud is based on LibreOffice.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

That's a funny comment - given that Collabora Online, which is the online office used in nextcloud is based on LibreOffice.

Collabora Online has just been prohibited from using LibreOffice trademarks ... by The Document Foundation.

Don't you recall the Document Foundation board kicking out all of the Collabora contributors from membership in the Document Foundation.

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Oerthling@reddit

The mess will be sorted out. There's suddenly more money available so everybody is trying to get a piece of the cake. It's understandable and something will shake out.

A permanent hard fork is unlikely.

When LO forked from OO (after Oracle took over and immediately made a mess with Java and OO), OO started to whither.

Either LO and Collabora will come to an agreement or we'll probably see one of them whither away.

We'll see.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

When LO forked from OO (after Oracle took over and immediately made a mess with Java and OO), OO started to whither.

Don't blame Oracle for the Java mess. Java was added by Sun long before Oracle took over ... and Oracle only took over because they bought Sun and its assets. Specifically Java was added in 2003 and the FSF complained about it in 2005 (because Java, itself, was not yet Free). Oracle only took over when they bought Sun in Jan 2010.

Oracle only controlled OO for 17 months (Jan 2010 to Jun 2011) and LO forked at the end of September 2010. And Oracle basically did nothing with it. That was the issue: it was clear that Oracle was going to retask/defund the paid OO developers.

Either LO and Collabora will come to an agreement or we'll probably see one of them whither away.

Maybe. Personally, I don't think they will come to an agreement (they have been trying for at least a few years already), and I do think that LO will whither away. I'm tired of TDF and especially Mike Saunders.

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asp174@reddit

"based" the same way Euro-Office is based on Onlyoffice?

While the Collabora team might be the biggest contributors to Libreoffice, It's a different product and a different company. Nextcloud does not use the LibreOffice Server, does it?

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

Are you sure? Not only it is possible, but Collabora makes that experience very polished.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

Are you sure? Not only it is possible, but Collabora makes that experience very polished.

Collabora Online has just been prohibited from using LibreOffice trademarks ... by The Document Foundation.

Don't you recall the Document Foundation board kicking out all of the Collabora contributors from membership in the Document Foundataion.

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burimo@reddit

That doesn't change, that I don't think about it

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Willing_Context7531@reddit

How this dispute is handled and resolved is relevant to all open source projects.

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Great-TeacherOnizuka@reddit

Same

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killersteak@reddit

i dont know, i just woke up...

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MyRedLiner@reddit

i don`t use any office

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nicman24@reddit

We are source! Ok I ll fork it! No no like that!

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Dalnore@reddit

I think using OnlyOffice is so inherently unethical that even a fork aimed at its purification can't save it. I don't plan to ever use either of them.

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imustbemax@reddit

Will switch to EuroOffice once it's out. Onlyoffice already had some shady business structures, so I would be happy to source it from a more transparent provider.
Would also be happy to just use LibreOffice, but I hate the UI there.

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turin331@reddit

Well Eurooffice is not a standalone application. It is an office plugin based on only office that stack holders (like proton, nextcloud etc) will integrate in their suite.

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nkay08@reddit

Onlyoffice also has standalone Desktop applications. But I don't know if those are covered by the Eurooffice project, or just the server for web integration.

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zinozAreNazis@reddit

Does onlyoffice has a cli like liberOffice? It’s one of the reasons I am somewhat stuck with it but might switch anyways. You can’t get the CLI without the rest of libreOffice

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Masterflitzer@reddit

if you're happy with libreoffice, just keep using it, it's great

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zinozAreNazis@reddit

It’s too heavy

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imustbemax@reddit

Not sure to be honest, never tried this out, I'm also mostly on my way of finding the right setup, etc. right now :D

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j0seplinux@reddit

I mean, if you didn't want anyone to contribute to or fork your project, why make it open source in the first place?

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showerhandles@reddit

I guess its their right though. If they want to have a license that does not allow certain things, then its theor code and they can decide what can legally be done with it.

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j0seplinux@reddit

Then make up their own license, not use a copyleft open source license like AGPL

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showerhandles@reddit

I guess a judge will decide that irrelevant of our opinions.

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Independent_Cat_5481@reddit

That would be true if they used thier own license, but they used AGPL3 which waives a lot of rights on thier end

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thunderbird32@reddit

More importantly, why didn't they do like Mozilla and write their own licenses that does what they want, rather than shoehorn their wants into AGPL3?

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scandii@reddit

I mean, claim to fame.

the open source to employment pipeline is very common. many former open source developers work at whatever they developed open source for.

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wristcontrol@reddit

This is why we can't have nice things.

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Linux_Account@reddit

The first to make a true dark mode on android wins.

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AleBaba@reddit

OnlyOffice doing stupid things as they've done in the past. They didn't like that people used their Open Source product for free and have since then been trying to correct that "mistake" by using proprietary parts and threats. They're also a Russian company I, I wouldn't trust their obfuscated binaries at all.

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hipi_hapa@reddit

I don't understand the need of a european fork.

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AiwendilH@reddit

https://github.com/Euro-Office

Euro-Office is based on the ONLYOFFICE Open Source, an AGPL codebase. This code base is being extensively reviewed and cleaned up, with the goal of making it easy to build and contribute to. Why did we resort to a fork, rather than collaborate? Of course, forking should be a last resort. Unfortunately, open collaboration with ONLYOFFICE was not possible, for a number of reasons:

Contributing is impossible or greatly discouraged. ONLYOFFICE typically does not review or accept pull requests. Build instructions are unreliable, outdated or just plain broken.

The company regularly makes controversial decisions like closing off features in the mobile apps like mobile editing, and the removal of an administrator panel.

Lacking transparency. Commit messages, when visible, often just refer to an issue number in an internal issue tracker. There are quite a number of binary blobs and compiled or obfuscated code blobs. Most internal code comments are Russian which makes is hard to work with.

The mobile apps are not really open source but just wrappers. Example. The apps have extensive proprietary sections which will need to be re-implemented. Work on this is underway.

ONLYOFFICE is a Russian company (despite many attempts to hide this), and nearly all developers reside in Russia. Open Source is a global effort, but current political situation makes collaboration hard and trust difficult to earn. Especially when development is not transparent and open. A lot of users and customers require software that is not potentially influenced or controlled by the Russian government.

Sounds mostly reasonable to me. (On top of the misuse of additional term for the AGPL by onlyoffice)

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Sinaaaa@reddit

Sure I'd love to use Euro Office, but is the project making progress? The github seems pretty stale, though I have not looked at it very hard.

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Migamix@reddit

Its stupid, it makes me not trust their software. Their altering the agreement with contradictory stuff in their licence. Yeah nah. They could have gained some much support from the entire world with them being the base code for office alternatives, but their atitude just makes them a fork that may not get the same support and addons a larger supported app will get.

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Xiphoseer@reddit

AGPL allows to supplement terms that

7c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from the original version

and not have that be a further restriction, but apparently FSF is not convinced a logo requirement falls under that.

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AiwendilH@reddit

Yeah, probably best to stop using onlyoffice and switching to eurooffice as soon as viable...their licesne seems to be at least AGPL "compliant".

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Great-TeacherOnizuka@reddit

What’s the difference between them as of now?

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marley_11111@reddit

Euro-Office currently isn’t in a usable state and OnlyOffice is. Euro-Office is targeting a first release this summer.

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Great-TeacherOnizuka@reddit

Then it’s not even worth talking about Euro-Office now.

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Distinct-Temp6557@reddit

"this summer" is technically next month.

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bvimo@reddit

It really depends where in the world you're located.

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chmod_7d20@reddit

probably the northern hemisphere.... Europe.

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georgehank2nd@reddit

I think OnlyOffice is full of shit and they will not sue anyone, because no lawyer would take their case. All they're doing (because that's all they can do) is grandstanding.

And in general, I won't use either, because I avoid the cloud as much as I can. I want my data on my computer, not on someone else's.

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whamra@reddit

They can't add further restrictions to the AGPL. The FSF commented in that.

That said, the AGPL still enforce that you have to publicly attribute the original copyright holder, onlyoffice, prominently in your fork and not remove any copyright notices they have placed. Which will be interesting to see them comply with, given the current hostile attitudes.

But then again, and until eurooffice actually produces some game changing code into the repo, it's just a renamed version, so who cares?

I'm also not european, so the name kinda stings.

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0xe1e10d68@reddit

Does the AGPL require that? It requires preserving Appropriate Legal Notices in User Interfaces.

It does not require you to add any attribution. Neither prominently nor non-prominently. You have to state that you modified the software, and that the license and additional terms apply.

Outside of that, every other author attribution or Appropriate Legal Notice only has to be preserved if the original license makes use of enforceable additional terms as per Section 7.

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whamra@reddit

Yes, not "add". Just preserve. Regardless where these were displayed.

From personal experience, I once had this issue with a project before. I forked their service for commercial use (one customer, really) while preserving all AGPL use. They had a note like "all rights by blah blah" with a link to their website. I was not allowed to remove that. I could edit it, as long as their name continues being. They even added js code eventually that checks if the note contains their name, if yes, leave it as is, if no, remove the whole thing and replace it with a generic one of their own. The AGPL allows them to do that and I was fine with giving them the attribution they deserve, but it was on every single page of the product.

So while, yes, it's limited, both sides can absolutely play dirty tricks here and there.

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rx80@reddit

No, you're dead wrong. Not "Regardless where these were displayed."

You should really read the AGPL, and related stuff.

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whamra@reddit

I like people who call others "dead wrong" but provide zero value to the conversation and can't even cite the license they're accusing me of not reading.

Section 5 regarding distributing modified versions of a program clearly state that you must provide "prominent" notices about your modification, and then further goes in 5d to state that if it's an interactive interface, which here it is, an appropriate notice must be displayed on all pages.

In practice, this is done in the fixed footer of a website, but it has to be somewhere.

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rx80@reddit

Yes, that is not "Regardless where these were displayed." I don't know if you didn't read what you pasted now, or if you didn't read what you wrote before. "Regardless where these were displayed." would mean anywhere, any place, everywhere, wherever. The license does not say that and your quotes/paraphrasing now doesn't support that.

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nicubunu@reddit

OnlyOffice is fake open source, so they deserved a hard fork

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natermer@reddit

Dumb as a bag of rocks.

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Tireseas@reddit

clear case of a developer not understanding the terms of their chosen license.

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rebellioninmypants@reddit

If there's drama around it, I don't touch it. Applies to both of these.

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shanehiltonward@reddit

Don't care. It's a high school girl fight that will pass. Europe can for Only Office and we can fork NATO. 😉

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InfaSyn@reddit

When I first heard about it I figured well whats the point, you're just ripping and rebranding only office.

Once I found out Only office was Russian ownership and they had been going out of their way to avoid external commits, that spooked me a bit.

Im still on only office (though fire-walled it off with no internet access), but am planning to move to euro office once its a little more mature and has sensible fedora packaging (or flatpak)

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petrujenac@reddit

Of course euro office is in the right. The problem is they won't provide integration with infomaniak services.

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mrlinkwii@reddit

honesty i think onlyoffice is correct here

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AiwendilH@reddit

I think this needs a bit more explaining...I have a really hard time seeing any way onlyoffice could be even slightly in the right here so really would like to hear what could be correct about their claims.

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ImWaitingForIron@reddit

Never heard of eurooffice and stopped using onlyoffice

LibreOffice is much better for me

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msanangelo@reddit

sigh what a stupid name, "EuroOffice". these projects will never gain recognition if they keep forking at every little license issue or internal squabble. The normies won't care how good it is if they never heard of it.

All I want is a program that can cleanly open a MS word doc without screwing up the formatting like LibreOffice does but it needs a name with some recognition, some reputation. OnlyOffice has that.

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Silly-Freak@reddit

"forking at every little license issue or internal squabble" doesn't quite characterize it: https://github.com/Euro-Office#euro-office-liberates-the-onlyoffice-code-base

Contributing is impossible or greatly discouraged. ONLYOFFICE typically does not review or accept pull requests. Build instructions are unreliable, outdated or just plain broken.

Also, "OnlyOffice" is recognizable? half the discussions on r/onlyoffice I witnessed had a significant proportion of users confusing it with OpenOffice.

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msanangelo@reddit

I mean, it's recognizable to me. :P

I know the difference between the two.

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Oerthling@reddit

What I want is for public institutions to fully adopt use of the proper ISO standard ODF. Not the fake standard MS pushed through in panic via corruption and then couldn't be bothered to properly implement itself because it was always just a distraction from the ODF ISO standard.

I was happy to read that Germany is, at last, pushing for that. Should have happened 10-20 years ago, but better late than never. Props to the french Gendarmerie to go there first. Anti-props to the idiots at the Munich CDU party who killed the LiMux project. Let's hope that MS fails to corrupt Schleswig-Holstein during their Linux migration.

Any institution unhappy with how LO menus or dialogues look or want to have them look more like Word/Excel? (to save on retraining costs or whatever) Get together with some like-minded parties and pay a couple programmers to build any UI mode you like. It's open source - you can get what you want.

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Tquilha@reddit

It's a silly fight.

One, open source is open source. you can't take any kind of GPL (or AGPL) code and "restrict it" in any way.

And picking Only Office to fork was, IMHO, the wrong move. The right move would be to join the Document Foundation and help Libre Office.

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PseudorandomNoise404@reddit

This is what bugs me. Is there something so inherently wrong or broken with LO or TDF that we need to be forking it in the first place?

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Silly-Freak@reddit

according to heise reporting:

Nextcloud and Ionos justify the decision for the Only-Office fork with its more modern architecture and code base compared to LibreOffice and its browser variant Collabora. „Libre Office is 35 years old and no longer the most innovative and fluid,“ said Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek. „You can also notice that in the browser.“ However, they want to continue working with Collabora and possibly incorporate Collabora components into Euro-Office.

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lukkall@reddit

compatibility with microsoft office

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Tquilha@reddit

As far as I know, the big differences are in UI and in collaboration. Nothing that couldn't be sorted easily within LO.

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Ybalrid@reddit

I don't know anything about anything going on there.

It seems the upstream project did something strange with the licensing term. It seems that fork, to me, is doing nothing wrong with regards to the license.

I don't think I personally care too much about the rest.

I use LibreOffice 🤷

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Nyuusankininryou@reddit

They may do what they want. I use Libre office and dont ser the reason for another fork.

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baronas15@reddit

OnlyOffice sounds like NSFW product for office use

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tulpyvow@reddit

I'm too employed for this <- unemployed

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Adam_Neverwas@reddit

Refactor fast, because I wanna use already. Don't name everything euro pls.

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Adam_Neverwas@reddit

Refactor fast, because I wanna use already

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kansetsupanikku@reddit

That OnlyOffice is shady, and license merely demonstrates it rather than being the only point of concern. Using it as a base is a poor management of EU funds.

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molegard@reddit

I see LibreOffice uses MPL-2.0. Was forking/contributing to LibreOffice a consideration for this project over OpenOffice? License aside, is OpenOffice a better software for their needs?

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0xe1e10d68@reddit

My legal opinion (I’m only a student; and also only spent limited amounts of time looking into this) would be, to put it succinctly, that ONLY OFFICE are misinterpreting the APGL license terms, and have an incorrect understanding of the legal situation.

The Free Software Foundation is also of the opinion that ONLY OFFICE has a wrong understanding of the APGL.

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Great-TeacherOnizuka@reddit

Don’t care

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MatchingTurret@reddit

¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯