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by bragh 1687 days ago
Usually projects like this are meant to be used together with Office 365 or for extending Microsoft ecosystem.

Straight from the README, but maybe there are other limitations:

"This project may contain Microsoft trademarks or logos for Microsoft projects, products, or services. Use of these trademarks or logos must follow Microsoft’s Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship."

2 comments

(Disclosure: Work at Microsoft, but I work in Azure and some open source stuff, not on or directly with Fluid/Office/etc.)

That's just a trademark clause for Microsoft logos and brands. The Fluid Framework itself is MIT licensed [0] and doesn't require exposing any of those logos/brands when you use it, so the framework itself is fairly open for usage.

I think the main thing that would slow down adoption for Fluid is that the only "production" backend is an Azure service, which isn't part of the open source Fluid Framework. Other open source backends[1] aren't recommended for productions. Until there are some open source ones, I'd assume adoption will be limited to folks in the Azure ecosystem.

[0]: https://github.com/microsoft/FluidFramework/blob/main/LICENS...

[1]: https://fluidframework.com/docs/deployment/service-options/

I don't get your point? Doesn't that just mean if you fork the project you can't imply that it is sponsored by Microsoft? I have seen similar clauses in most open-source projects. This seems even more generous in that they don't demand you remove all the trademarks and logos just that you can't use the logo in a way that implies endorsement.
I am not saying whether you should or should not use this product. My point is that before using such products, you need to read really carefully where and how you can use it this product because of the included resources or intended purpose for using this. It is not sufficient to only read the README file and decide based on that.

The key part here is the second sentence "Use of these trademarks or logos must follow Microsoft’s Trademark & Brand Guidelines.". But there can be other such limitations also, just hidden somewhere else.