Submitted 17 hours ago by nemeski@mander.xyz to technology@lemmy.zip
Instead of continuing the fight over branding, OnlyOffice has proposed what it calls a “constructive” path forward. The letter demands that Euro-Office change its UI and source code.
I love this.
This is the problem with everyone going opensource to get away from big tech. No one wants to put in the work to help open source projects, and can’t even be fucked to attribute the original code. It’s all take, take, take, and the shareholders love it because they only thing they heard was “free.”
Nextcloud tried to work with OnlyOffice, but they refused and don’t look at any PR’s
So Nextcloud forked it and created EuroOffice. Now OnlyOffice is pissed
Sure, I get the fork, and that’s the beauty of open source. However, attribution should be standard. You can’t just fork and claim it as your own. It’s still based on code someone else wrote.
It’s pretty funny on its face ("If you want to use a different logo, then use different code too"), but I have the feeling that this schism is just going to make open-source office projects worse in general.
FSF has already called out OnlyOffice (just without naming them) and says GPL doesn’t allow it.
Additionally you’re not allowed to claim you’re using GPL if you add impermissible additions to the license
5d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.
I don’t get where do they come with the logos and branding. While it’s fair and just to give credit. I would understand this section as permission (if they were really mean about it) to leave any and all pages out of the fork and it wouldn’t bind them to even have any UI attributions, to anybody, but if they have something like about or license page then that should contain licenses and attributions? That is as long as the work has reasonable attributions somewhere. Or does the license limit modification in those parts of the UI code? I don’t think it does. I could be wrong.
The license explicitly allows you to change how it is displayed as long as the new attribution sufficiently identifies the prior author(s) and remain discoverable
Natanael@slrpnk.net 16 hours ago
AGPLv3 only requires preservation of attribution but not full branding
ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
They use a modified version of the AGPL that includes a requirement to use their logo.
They also, in a separate section, note that no permission is granted to use their trademarks.
As far as I can tell, the goal is to create a catch-22 that prevents you from forking the project: if you don’t include the logo, they complain that you didn’t include it, and if you include the logo they complain that you’re infringing their trademark.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 12 hours ago
Fun fact - FSF doesn’t let you claim it’s a GPL variant if you have added claims to it. If you say it’s GPL then others gets to assume it’s GPL proper
www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL