OnlyOffice thought they found a clever loophole in the AGPL license. They were wrong, and now a coalition of European tech companies is calling their bluff with a fork called Euro Office.
The Setup
For years, OnlyOffice marketed itself as an open source office suite under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL). It’s a solid alternative to Microsoft Office, especially for collaborative work. Companies like Nextcloud, Proton, and Ionos integrated it into their platforms. Everyone was happy.
Except OnlyOffice apparently wasn’t actually committed to being open source.
The Licensing Trap
Buried in their license terms since 2021, OnlyOffice added a special requirement: any fork of their software must display the OnlyOffice logo. At the same time, they explicitly prohibit anyone from using their trademarks, which includes that logo.
Read that again. You must use their logo, but you’re not allowed to use their logo.
It’s a legal catch-22 designed to make forking technically impossible while maintaining the appearance of being open source. As one Redditor put it: “what they did there is a way to make it appear as if they would be open while actually not being open.”
But the Problems Run Deeper
The licensing games were just the tip of the iceberg. According to Euro Office’s documentation, OnlyOffice has been hostile to open source development in practice for years:
- No community contributions accepted. OnlyOffice typically doesn’t review or accept pull requests from outside developers.
- Broken build instructions. The documentation for building from source is unreliable, outdated, or just doesn’t work.
- Zero transparency. Commit messages reference internal Russian issue trackers that nobody outside the company can access. Code comments are in Russian. The codebase contains binary blobs and obfuscated code.
- Fake mobile apps. The mobile apps aren’t actually open source. They’re proprietary wrappers around closed-source code that will need to be completely rewritten.
- Controversial decisions. OnlyOffice has removed features like mobile editing and admin panels without community input.
This isn’t a company that made one licensing mistake. This is a company that wanted the marketing benefits of “open source” without any of the actual openness.
Enter the European Coalition
A group of European tech companies decided enough was enough. The coalition includes Nextcloud, Proton, Ionos, XWiki, OpenProject, EuroStack, Soverin, Abilian, and BTactic. They’re forking OnlyOffice into a project called Euro Office, stripping out the contradictory license terms, and releasing it as genuinely open source.
This isn’t just about Europe, though. Euro Office’s FAQ explicitly states: “Open Source is an international movement, and we are definitely open to contributions by anyone, anywhere!” The name reflects who’s organizing it, not who can use it.
The fork is positioning itself as “sovereign office” software. In an era where geopolitical tensions affect technology supply chains, European companies want collaborative office software they can trust and control.
OnlyOffice Fires Back
OnlyOffice responded with a lengthy legal statement claiming Euro Office is violating their license. Their argument hinges on Section 7 of the AGPL, which allows copyright holders to add “additional terms.”
They claim these terms are “indivisible” from the license and cannot be selectively removed. According to OnlyOffice: “any removal, disregard, or unilateral ‘exclusion’ of conditions imposed under Section 7 constitutes use beyond the scope of the granted license and therefore a breach.”
Who’s Right?
The Free Software Foundation, which created the AGPL, says OnlyOffice is full of it.
Here’s why: The AGPL explicitly addresses this in Section 10. Any “non-permissive additional terms” count as “further restrictions” and can be removed by anyone who receives the software. The license literally says “you may remove that term.”
OnlyOffice’s logo requirement is textbook non-permissive. It restricts what you can do with the software. Under the AGPL’s own rules, Euro Office can strip it out.
The FSF confirmed that OnlyOffice’s interpretation is wrong. The Reddit thread is full of developers and legal students explaining why OnlyOffice doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
What Euro Office Actually Is
Important clarification: Euro Office isn’t trying to be the next LibreOffice. It’s not a standalone office suite.
Instead, it’s designed as an integration component. Think of it as the editing engine that other platforms embed. Nextcloud uses it for collaborative document editing. Proton could integrate it into Proton Drive. XWiki and OpenProject can use it for their document workflows.
The companies behind it chose OnlyOffice’s codebase over LibreOffice/Collabora because, as Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek put it: “LibreOffice is 35 years old and no longer the most innovative and fluid. You can also notice that in the browser.”
OnlyOffice has a more modern architecture and is browser-native, while Collabora renders server-side. For web-based collaboration, that matters.
The Russian Angle
Euro Office’s GitHub page doesn’t hide this: “ONLYOFFICE is a Russian company (despite many attempts to hide this), and nearly all developers reside in Russia.”
In the current geopolitical climate, that’s a problem for European companies. Not because of xenophobia, but because of trust and control. When your office suite’s development is opaque, the code contains binary blobs, and comments are in a language most contributors can’t read, the lack of transparency becomes a security concern.
Several Redditors pointed out that Russian law now allows ignoring copyright from “hostile countries,” which technically includes the AGPL license text itself. Whether OnlyOffice would actually exploit that is speculation, but it shows why European companies want a fork they control.
Building It Right This Time
Euro Office is doing what OnlyOffice should have done: building transparent governance.
They’re setting up a steering committee, following a “who codes, decides” model, and making decisions by consensus among project members. Anyone can contribute. Organizations can formally join by coordinating with maintainers and committing resources.
The contrast is deliberate. OnlyOffice was controlled by a single company that ignored community contributions. Euro Office is designed to be a genuine community project.
What Happens Next
Euro Office is targeting a first release this summer. Until then, the community is split between sticking with OnlyOffice, switching to LibreOffice, or waiting for the fork.
OnlyOffice could sue, but they’d be fighting the Free Software Foundation’s interpretation of their own license. That’s not a battle you win in court or in public opinion. More likely, they’ll continue claiming Euro Office is illegitimate while the fork gains momentum.
The Euro Office coalition already has over 1,000 stars on their main repository and active development across 20 repos. The community is voting with their commits.
The Real Lesson
You can’t slap an open source license on your project, add restrictions that gut what “open source” means, ignore community contributions, fill your code with binary blobs, and then act surprised when people fork it.
OnlyOffice wanted the reputation of open source without the accountability. They wanted community integrations without community input. They wanted to be seen as transparent while running everything through internal Russian issue trackers.
The AGPL has safeguards against exactly this kind of behavior, and they’re about to get tested in the real world.
OnlyOffice tried to have their cake and eat it too. Now they might end up with neither.
