“The legal situation was also discussed with Bradley M. Kuhn, the creator of the AGPL license, and he supports our legal assessment 100%,” the spokesperson said.
“We are not opposed to forks — they are a natural and important part of the open-source ecosystem,” said Galina Goduhina, commercial director at OnlyOffice. “However, full compliance requires respecting the licensing terms in their entirety, including preserving required attribution elements such as product logos and branding where applicable, and ensuring accurate representation of the origin of the software.
“It also means clearly informing users about what the product is based on, rather than presenting it in a way that could create confusion about authorship. In practical terms, this is about using open-source software responsibly, not rebranding it in a way that obscures its origin or suggests ownership where it does not exist,” Goduhina said.
With regards to OnlyOffice’s announcement to end the partnership, the Nextcloud spokesperson said: “We are disappointed by their choice to end the collaboration because of our contributions to Euro-Office and we hope they will reconsider.”
