Krzysztof Siewicz, a lawyer for the Free Software Foundation, stated that the claims of the ONLYOFFICE developers to the creators of the Euro-Office fork, who discarded the additions and continued the development of the ONLYOFFICE code base under the pure AGPLv3 license, are unfounded. The Free Software Foundation called on ONLYOFFICE to clarify that since the package is licensed under the AGPLv3 license, users who receive a copy of the code have the right to remove any additional restrictions from the license text.
Furthermore, it is stated that if the ONLYOFFICE project intends to continue using AGPLv3 in future releases, it must explicitly indicate that the code base is distributed under the AGPLv3 license and remove reference to all restrictions from the documentation and source code. ONLYOFFICE’s actions to add additional restrictions to the AGPLv3 license have been called misleading and inconsistent with the spirit of free software.
The AGPLv3 license under which the ONLYOFFICE code is distributed was added in 2021 to require that derivatives retain the original ONLYOFFICE logo. Section 7(b) of the AGPL permits the addition of additional attribution requirements and the ONLYOFFICE developers believe that the logo falls within this permission. Representatives of the Open Source Foundation do not agree with this and argue that the logo is an element of a trademark and brand, not directly related to the mention of the author.
The logo clause was perceived by the Open Source Foundation as introducing a restriction incompatible with the freedoms provided by the AGPLv3 license. Section 7 of the AGPLv3 license gives users the right to remove restrictions that exceed the conditions defined in sections 7(a)-7(f). ONLYOFFICE may create its own license based on the AGPL text with additional terms, but in this case it should not mention that the code continues to be provided under the AGPLv3 license.