European tech firms will ship the first stable release of Euro-Office next month, giving governments and businesses worldwide a ready-to-run, sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs.
OnlyOffice also used to have an artificial limit of 20 users simultaneously connected, you had to purchase the Enterprise edition for more. Euro-Office essentially removed the lock for free… and that basically forced OnlyOffice to remove the limit too, so I expect they are pissed :P
In summary, you can add additional terms to disclaim warranties, include some extra notice/attribution, etc. but the terms can’t really require something that effectively limits the rights explicitly granted in the AGPL (like… you can’t require the inclusion of a trademarked logo, since it would effectively restrict anyone who doesn’t have trademark rights), the license explicitly allows licensees to ignore/remove any terms that impose additional restrictions like those.
They also added additional terms section in the license file, with some things that were not explicitly requested before (and that it’s still contested whether they fit what the AGPL allows as additional terms). But they only did that later, Euro-Office is still using the previous version of the license that did not have those new additional terms.
Thanks for the info… and yep, competition is good!
Yet, you have to recognize this feels like it was not handled appropriately by either party, I sense there was toxicity all around. Actually both suites could potentially be instantly benefiting from eachother but now I am afraid both will work to undermine the other, while both are in the same boat. No inspiring either if a third company (mainly Russian or Chinese) is thinking in financing a FOSS product.
In Open Source projects, I would love to see more collaboration and less competition, because too many forks risk creating chaos and confusion in potential adopters.
You’re naïve if you think that Euro Office was just a toxic take over without any geopolitical meaning. Both the US and their EU vassals are arming themselves to go to war. I want to see how a burger, a sausage and a baguette will sell themselves as heroes this time. All of us can see how bad they are.
It is an OnlyOffice fork. They are not happy about it.
https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-license-violations-in-euro-office-project-by-nextcloud-and-ionos
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Euro-Office-OnlyOffice-accuses-of-license-violations-11241334.html
OnlyOffice also used to have an artificial limit of 20 users simultaneously connected, you had to purchase the Enterprise edition for more. Euro-Office essentially removed the lock for free… and that basically forced OnlyOffice to remove the limit too, so I expect they are pissed :P
For the record, this was the response from the FSF regarding the licensing: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/agpl-is-not-a-tool-for-taking-freedom-away
In summary, you can add additional terms to disclaim warranties, include some extra notice/attribution, etc. but the terms can’t really require something that effectively limits the rights explicitly granted in the AGPL (like… you can’t require the inclusion of a trademarked logo, since it would effectively restrict anyone who doesn’t have trademark rights), the license explicitly allows licensees to ignore/remove any terms that impose additional restrictions like those.
In the end, OnlyOffice changed the license headers, removing the contradictory restriction.
They also added additional terms section in the license file, with some things that were not explicitly requested before (and that it’s still contested whether they fit what the AGPL allows as additional terms). But they only did that later, Euro-Office is still using the previous version of the license that did not have those new additional terms.
Thanks for the info… and yep, competition is good!
Yet, you have to recognize this feels like it was not handled appropriately by either party, I sense there was toxicity all around. Actually both suites could potentially be instantly benefiting from eachother but now I am afraid both will work to undermine the other, while both are in the same boat. No inspiring either if a third company (mainly Russian or Chinese) is thinking in financing a FOSS product.
In Open Source projects, I would love to see more collaboration and less competition, because too many forks risk creating chaos and confusion in potential adopters.
You’re naïve if you think that Euro Office was just a toxic take over without any geopolitical meaning. Both the US and their EU vassals are arming themselves to go to war. I want to see how a burger, a sausage and a baguette will sell themselves as heroes this time. All of us can see how bad they are.