FRESH

Hacker News

Home

AGPLv3§74 Empowers Users to Thwart Badgeware Like OnlyOffice

96 points by pabs3

by RobotToaster

2 subcomments

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.

by clcaev

0 subcomment

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.

by felixg3

1 subcomments

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.

by aniviacat

4 subcomments

First time I hear about Euro-Office. I wonder if that's a serious project or just fishing for EU funding.

by butvacuum

0 subcomment

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

by roenxi

3 subcomments

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.

by stefankuehnel

0 subcomment

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!

by andrewshadura

1 subcomments

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.

by pwdisswordfishq

0 subcomment

Hacker News is too good for pilcrows?

by ndisn

0 subcomment

Only a German could come up with “AGPLv3§7¶4”