The fact that the addictional terms are basically designed to defeat the original licence should make it clear to anyone that it isn't a "reasonable legal notice".
IMO this is a great illustration of how the word "reasonable" stops the entire legal system collapsing.
Contract law uses Contra proferentem ("interpretation against the draftsman") principle: Ambiguous or confusing contract is interpreted against the party that provided the wording. It's amazing principle that makes things reasonable. Trying to be intentionally sneaky and confusing backfires.
Contra proferentem is most important with "contracts of adhesion" like OSS licences that are pre-written contracts which are strict take-it or leave-it, leaving no opportunity for a party to bargain over specific contractual terms. Because the party does not have an opportunity to negotiate they may reasonably interpret a term in a different manner than the contract offeror intended.
The court would likely rule that the more comprehensive document takes precedence (exactly what the AGPLv3 intended.) Less likely outcome is that the court decides there was no valid license at all. This would technically be copyright infringement, but they almost certainly wouldn't issue sanctions because of the innocent infringer principle. Sneaky Company, Inc. messed the license writing and that makes copyright infringement understandable.
But the key question is will the court accept it as an AGP License or accept the argument that it shouldn't be considered an AGPL licence but a derivative one with extra terms (because it has been modified)? If it is the latter, then everyone using their code would need to comply, in my opinion.
That's not the question. There is an AGPL there and extra terms so that would not be under dispute either side. It would be derivative one from the start.
The court would have to decide the rules of construction in the contract and what to do with conflicting clauses. They would verify what Section 7 says. They would ask "Did the Sneaky Company lead the users to believe they had a license with AGPLv3 terms", was there room for confusion? Was the license ambiguity given that it was take-or-leave it style unfair to users?
The court would probably see evidence from company web site, and public communication to see how they advertised the software. If the company mentions AGPL and is vague about extra terms, it would be bad for the Sneaky Company.
I feel like I am missing too much background here. If there is only one licensor, why add terms to defeat the license it chose rather than choose a license which does not need defeating?
Attribution requirements in a free software setting should be viewed as a symmetric property: however you treat incorporated contributions should be a guide (upper bound) for how your own attribution is handled. Symmetry among contributors is a founding principle of Debian licensing requirements, and with respect to legal notices, also seen in the Apache 2.0 (via NOTICE clause) license.
The Free Software Foundation sometimes went further than the Apache Foundation with their About dialog or textual notices for end users, so they would learn about their affirmative rights. The purpose of this "prominent but reasonable" preservation requirement is to retain this end user advocacy. Specifically, the GPL copyright contains a prologue which the FSF wished to broadly distribute. This badgeware stuff is a decade old abuse of this end user advocacy strategy.
An otherwise permissive license with a prominent but symmetric end user notification might be a helpful addition to OSI license options, but care is needed so it is compatible with GPLv3, reasonable to textual or embedded environments, and precludes stupid badgeware nonsense. Standard approaches and bill of materials could improve the state of the art.
Remember that this is also happening - rightfully so - for political reasons. OnlyOffice‘s UBOs are in Russia and the local variant (same code, same dev) R7 office actively recommended by the Regime in Moscow. The company supports the war against Ukraine.
Most of the companies behind it (including NextCloud itself & IONOS) are providing a document cloud to their users already & are used to maintaining Open Source, so I would indeed assume some seriousness here.
This is much bigger than subsidies. IONOS is already making serious money in selling "we host FOSS for you" to both users and (though generally: small) companies. They can expect to gain substantially greater revenue from acquiring larger commercial and municipal/federal customers.. IF the full package attains sufficient interoperability to withstand the usual anti-competitive tactics.
This all seems a bit silly. Sneaky Company, Inc. can also add in that this new clause should be removed.
The problem here isn't the legal interpretation of the license and adding new clauses doesn't seem to do anything useful. Sneaky Company can license their software under whatever weird combination of terms they like. If they want GPL except it's proprietary then they can do that. Weird but ok. Same again if they want the license to be internally contradictory - seems stupid but they can do that too.
The actual issue is if they're trying to be deceptive by framing something as GPL licensed when in fact it is some new not-in-the-GPL-spirit license that they have developed. They should either be generally shamed or sued by whoever has copyright over the term "GPL" (pretty sure that is the FSF). That'd be ironic but there you go. Or some sort of false advertising suite.
Contract law has Contra Proferentem ("interpretation against the draftsman") principle, Ambiguous or confusing contract is interpreted against the party that provided the wording.
If Sneaky Company makes weird and confusing license, it's interpreted against them.
> If they want GPL except it's proprietary then they can do that.
Only if they don't use the text of the GPL to do that, as it's not a freely licensed work (more specifically, they'd have to use a different name, remove mentions of GNU and remove the GPL preamble to be able to use the rest of GPL as a base for their license).
Before they even explain what the project is or what it does, you're immediately greeted with a "Legal note". It literally takes up the whole screen. It feels like a "WARNING. Private Property. NO TRESPASSING. Violators will be prosecuted!" sign rather than an invitation to explore a supposedly "free and open-source" software project.
And then, of course, they add a "Contributors welcome!" section. Sure. They're happy to accept free work from the free and open-source software community, but the rights that community is supposed to get under the AGPL v3.0 license? Those rights are ignored, as per their own convenience.
But don't worry, they do mention the "open-source" nature of their project with a hint at the license at the end:
> ONLYOFFICE is distributed under the AGPL v3.0 license, ensuring transparency and commitment to the open-source community.
What a joke!
---
Just a note: I have no problem with a software developer deciding under what conditions to distribute their software to users. If users become aware of the software project, it is up to them to decide whether or not they agree to those conditions. Because of the benefits that free and open-source software offers users and developers, I believe strongly in free and open-source software. Here, however, "free" does not mean "free of charge", but rather "free" as in "freedom". While I won't applaud someone who doesn't redistribute their software as "free and open-source software", I also don't hold a grudge against them.
However, I have a problem with the fact that, on the one hand, software is marketed as "free and open-source" software (apparently because it sounds good) while, on the other hand, the rights of the "free and open-source" software community are disregarded, abused, and trampled upon in such a despicable manner!
Quite clearly OnlyOffice never wanted to have a fully free software office suite. The (mis)use of AGPL has always been a marketing trick and nothing more.
The fact that the addictional terms are basically designed to defeat the original licence should make it clear to anyone that it isn't a "reasonable legal notice".
IMO this is a great illustration of how the word "reasonable" stops the entire legal system collapsing.
Contract law uses Contra proferentem ("interpretation against the draftsman") principle: Ambiguous or confusing contract is interpreted against the party that provided the wording. It's amazing principle that makes things reasonable. Trying to be intentionally sneaky and confusing backfires.
Contra proferentem is most important with "contracts of adhesion" like OSS licences that are pre-written contracts which are strict take-it or leave-it, leaving no opportunity for a party to bargain over specific contractual terms. Because the party does not have an opportunity to negotiate they may reasonably interpret a term in a different manner than the contract offeror intended.
The court would likely rule that the more comprehensive document takes precedence (exactly what the AGPLv3 intended.) Less likely outcome is that the court decides there was no valid license at all. This would technically be copyright infringement, but they almost certainly wouldn't issue sanctions because of the innocent infringer principle. Sneaky Company, Inc. messed the license writing and that makes copyright infringement understandable.
But the key question is will the court accept it as an AGP License or accept the argument that it shouldn't be considered an AGPL licence but a derivative one with extra terms (because it has been modified)? If it is the latter, then everyone using their code would need to comply, in my opinion.
That's not the question. There is an AGPL there and extra terms so that would not be under dispute either side. It would be derivative one from the start.
The court would have to decide the rules of construction in the contract and what to do with conflicting clauses. They would verify what Section 7 says. They would ask "Did the Sneaky Company lead the users to believe they had a license with AGPLv3 terms", was there room for confusion? Was the license ambiguity given that it was take-or-leave it style unfair to users?
The court would probably see evidence from company web site, and public communication to see how they advertised the software. If the company mentions AGPL and is vague about extra terms, it would be bad for the Sneaky Company.
I feel like I am missing too much background here. If there is only one licensor, why add terms to defeat the license it chose rather than choose a license which does not need defeating?
Attribution requirements in a free software setting should be viewed as a symmetric property: however you treat incorporated contributions should be a guide (upper bound) for how your own attribution is handled. Symmetry among contributors is a founding principle of Debian licensing requirements, and with respect to legal notices, also seen in the Apache 2.0 (via NOTICE clause) license.
The Free Software Foundation sometimes went further than the Apache Foundation with their About dialog or textual notices for end users, so they would learn about their affirmative rights. The purpose of this "prominent but reasonable" preservation requirement is to retain this end user advocacy. Specifically, the GPL copyright contains a prologue which the FSF wished to broadly distribute. This badgeware stuff is a decade old abuse of this end user advocacy strategy.
An otherwise permissive license with a prominent but symmetric end user notification might be a helpful addition to OSI license options, but care is needed so it is compatible with GPLv3, reasonable to textual or embedded environments, and precludes stupid badgeware nonsense. Standard approaches and bill of materials could improve the state of the art.
Remember that this is also happening - rightfully so - for political reasons. OnlyOffice‘s UBOs are in Russia and the local variant (same code, same dev) R7 office actively recommended by the Regime in Moscow. The company supports the war against Ukraine.
Thanks, I was baffled by this licensing thing and how it was being reported. Suddenly it all makes much more sense now.
First time I hear about Euro-Office. I wonder if that's a serious project or just fishing for EU funding.
Most of the companies behind it (including NextCloud itself & IONOS) are providing a document cloud to their users already & are used to maintaining Open Source, so I would indeed assume some seriousness here.
This is much bigger than subsidies. IONOS is already making serious money in selling "we host FOSS for you" to both users and (though generally: small) companies. They can expect to gain substantially greater revenue from acquiring larger commercial and municipal/federal customers.. IF the full package attains sufficient interoperability to withstand the usual anti-competitive tactics.
IONOS and Nextcloud are serious companies.
Both, I imagine
I've never seen the term badgeware- and neither has google or bing (at least in my bubble).
theres <12 results- most of which are for some python thing, the rest are posts to this same page on reddit etc
This all seems a bit silly. Sneaky Company, Inc. can also add in that this new clause should be removed.
The problem here isn't the legal interpretation of the license and adding new clauses doesn't seem to do anything useful. Sneaky Company can license their software under whatever weird combination of terms they like. If they want GPL except it's proprietary then they can do that. Weird but ok. Same again if they want the license to be internally contradictory - seems stupid but they can do that too.
The actual issue is if they're trying to be deceptive by framing something as GPL licensed when in fact it is some new not-in-the-GPL-spirit license that they have developed. They should either be generally shamed or sued by whoever has copyright over the term "GPL" (pretty sure that is the FSF). That'd be ironic but there you go. Or some sort of false advertising suite.
FSF did the shame thing:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/agpl-is-not-a-tool-for-t... https://lwn.net/Articles/1067771/
Contract law has Contra Proferentem ("interpretation against the draftsman") principle, Ambiguous or confusing contract is interpreted against the party that provided the wording.
If Sneaky Company makes weird and confusing license, it's interpreted against them.
> If they want GPL except it's proprietary then they can do that.
Only if they don't use the text of the GPL to do that, as it's not a freely licensed work (more specifically, they'd have to use a different name, remove mentions of GNU and remove the GPL preamble to be able to use the rest of GPL as a base for their license).
Take a look at the README on their GitHub profile: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/.github/tree/bed623f6efcc76b40...
Before they even explain what the project is or what it does, you're immediately greeted with a "Legal note". It literally takes up the whole screen. It feels like a "WARNING. Private Property. NO TRESPASSING. Violators will be prosecuted!" sign rather than an invitation to explore a supposedly "free and open-source" software project.
And then, of course, they add a "Contributors welcome!" section. Sure. They're happy to accept free work from the free and open-source software community, but the rights that community is supposed to get under the AGPL v3.0 license? Those rights are ignored, as per their own convenience.
But don't worry, they do mention the "open-source" nature of their project with a hint at the license at the end:
> ONLYOFFICE is distributed under the AGPL v3.0 license, ensuring transparency and commitment to the open-source community.
What a joke!
---
Just a note: I have no problem with a software developer deciding under what conditions to distribute their software to users. If users become aware of the software project, it is up to them to decide whether or not they agree to those conditions. Because of the benefits that free and open-source software offers users and developers, I believe strongly in free and open-source software. Here, however, "free" does not mean "free of charge", but rather "free" as in "freedom". While I won't applaud someone who doesn't redistribute their software as "free and open-source software", I also don't hold a grudge against them.
However, I have a problem with the fact that, on the one hand, software is marketed as "free and open-source" software (apparently because it sounds good) while, on the other hand, the rights of the "free and open-source" software community are disregarded, abused, and trampled upon in such a despicable manner!
Quite clearly OnlyOffice never wanted to have a fully free software office suite. The (mis)use of AGPL has always been a marketing trick and nothing more.
Software wants to be free.
Software is like sex. It's better when it's free.
Hacker News is too good for pilcrows?
Only a German could come up with “AGPLv3§7¶4”