Geogebra 4.0.41 has been released upstream. Please consider updating the current Debian package in unstable.
Hi. Il 08/11/2012 11:49, Andrea Colangelo ha scritto: I'll be working on it. Unfortunately, last versions appear to have many more dependencies and many changes in how the source files are organized, so I may take some time to sort everything out. Giovanni.
Hi. Il 16/05/2013 23:34, Giovanni Mascellani ha scritto: Following a closer inspection at the licensing terms GeoGebra authors use, I noticed that GeoGebra isn't free anymore, starting from version 4.2. The help and language files, which were before distributed under CC-BY-SA 3.0+, have now the NC attribute to[1]. Moreover, it doesn't seem to be possible to just avoid them, because at least the language files are required to build the program. [1] http://www.geogebra.org/cms/license The version 4.0, already in Debian and released in wheezy, is unencumbered by this problem. So far, it seems to be impossible to package version 4.2 or, even less, any later version (including the version 5, currently in beta). I'm really sorry of this thing and will get in touch with GeoGebra developers to ask for clarifications and understand whether it's possible to revert this decision. Giovanni.
Oh, that hurts! :( Hope they will understand DFSG's reasons. Please, keep me up-to-date with this issue, I am very interested in it.
Il 25/06/2013 12:25, Andrea Colangelo ha scritto: For sure. Unfortunately, I don't think good news are upcoming: GeoGebra developers (in particular, I communicated with Markus Hohenwarter, but I know that other people or representatives are answering with similar wordings) assert that the license of GeoGebra was only clarified, not modified. This is plainly false, since they added a NonCommercial clause to the Creative Commons they're using; I commented underlining this fact, but they didn't answer anymore. They say that the task of "clarifying" GeoGebra's license was performed by some not specified firm, "with many years of experience with software licensing". I don't understand whether GeoGebra developers wanted to change license in order to switch to a more commercial-oriented development model, or if this "experienced firm" just failed to understand what free software is and applied a non commercial license just because everyone does so. Unfortunately, upstream's unwillingness to answer my last email suggests the former... Giovanni.
Il 25/06/2013 18:47, Giovanni Mascellani ha scritto: Little follow-up: the same bug request was posted in Lunchpad too. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/geogebra/+bug/1211966 There is some more discussion happening there, although admittedly not much. Giovanni.
Hi! I noticed today that the licence change of GeoGebra leaves the program in a very messy situation. GeoGebra is a fantastic piece of software for use in education -- I use it myself and know many others who do so, which is why I would like to work with you to resolve this problem. Let me firstly say that I completely appreciate why you have taken steps to differentiate between commercial and non-commercial licensing. My experience is, however, that engagement with the wider free software community is much more fruitful and will lead to code contributions in a way that restrictive licences will not. Moreover, free software authors have a very long tradition of being able to obtain cash or in-kind contributions from commercial organisations who are using free software by directly engaging with them. More carrot and less stick is a more reliable approach. The conclusions I draw below are not only based on the idealism of Free Software that I hold as a Debian Developer but also on pragmatic, practical and legal readings of the licences involved. I have drawn on the Debian project's twenty years of experience in dealing with software licences. The problems I highlight below not only cause problems for the Debian project (and its derivatives like Ubuntu) but are also a fundamental problem for the International GeoGebra Institute itself and all other educational institutions that want to use GeoGebra. The current situation will lead to GeoGebra being removed from the mainstream Linux distributions (Debian, Debian- Edu/SkoleLinux, Ubuntu, Fedora etc). It also precludes mass-deployment of GeoGebra in educational institutions, especially in environments where a student is given a physical device like a laptop that is imaged by a central IT department. I feel quite confident that the above scenario was not the outcome that the International GeoGebra Institute had in mind when relicensing GeoGebra. It would be great if we could have an open discussion and sort out this problem. To specific details: Let us first be very precise and recognise that this is not a licence clarification but a licence change. Version 4.0.34.0, for instance, clearly places the work under GPLv3 and CC-BY-SA 3.0. The licence text goes on to discuss commercial vs non-commercial use but only in the context where you "put the resulting work under your copyright". That is to say that commercial usage is permitted, the software is free for anyone to use, free for them to modify and free for them to redistribute. The restrictions here are against people claiming copyright over material that is actually the copyright of the GeoGebra authors; this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and in fact is already covered by the GPLv3 anyway. However, the licence text attached to version 4.2.55.0 is GPLv3 and CC-BY-NC- SA 3.0 and additional restrictions. A conversion from CC-BY-SA 3.0 to CC-BY- NC-SA 3.0 is not clarification. The imposition of the extra restrictions is not confined to just the properties files but applies to java source code as well [0]; this is not a clarification but the imposition of a large number of restrictive conditions. The intent of this licence is to impose restrictions on commercial usage in such a way that users are no longer free to use the software. No users are permitted to redistribute the software (§10) which would also make redistribution of modified versions impossible as well. No-one is permitted to improve GeoGebra. GeoGebra is no longer free software. Have all copyright holders (java programmers, artists, translators -- there are many!) who contributed their work under the old licence terms agreed to the relicencing of their work? Does that include the CEA/CNRS/INRI who are copyright holders for the sections derived from scilab? The claim in §9 that GeoGebra is "Copyright (C) International GeoGebra Institute, 2013" is at best an assertion about the compilation; it does not cover significant chunks of the code or the bundled libraries and those bits of code are not the International GeoGebra Institute's to relicence. The licence text goes to great lengths to impose additional restrictions over and above the GPLv3 while also stating that GeoGebra is available under GPLv3 (clause 3 of the GeoGebra licence). Under §7 of GPLv3, I am permitted to ignore any additional restrictions imposed on me by the GeoGebra licence. This would strike out the entirety of the "non-commercial" aspects of the licence and the other restrictions about redistribution (§10). (The licence itself is not self-consistent on the point of redistribution; §10 forbids redistribution, while the preamble permits it.) At this point in the analysis, I am left with two choices: (a) I can conclude that GeoGebra is actually GPLv3 and strike out the rest of the licence terms. Anyone can use GeoGebra for commercial or non-commercial purposes; it's Free Software. (b) I can conclude that GeoGebra is *not* available under the GPLv3 as there are additional restrictions in force. Unfortunately, that means that GeoGebra is instead under a GPL-incompatible licence. Scenario (b) puts the International GeoGebra Institute in violation of the licences of two libraries that GeoGebra is linked against. EPS Graphics and JLaTeXMath are both licensed under the GPL "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version". Additionally, the International GeoGebra Institute is in violation of the scilab licence which covers section of the java code and which does not permit discrimination based on the field of endeavour (§5.1 of scilab's COPYING [1]). Precompiled binaries of GeoGebra containing these libraries (such as the ones found at [2]) can only be offered if the licence terms of the entire download are compatible with the constituent parts. If we accept that "GPLv3 + CC-BY- NC-SA 3.0 + additional restrictions" is more than just GPLv3 (i.e. we ignore §7 of GPLv3), then this licence is not compatible with either GPLv2 or GPLv3 as required by EPS Graphics, JLaTeXMath; it's also incompatible with scilab. At present, distribution of recent versions of GeoGebra by anyone *including* International GeoGebra Institute is in violation of the licence JLaTeXMath, EPS Graphics and scilab. Violation of the GPL means that you do not have the right to distribute that work. Quite simply, each of the download links at [2] becomes a copyright violation and any school, university or linux distribution that passed on copies of GeoGebra to staff/students/users would also be committing a copyright violation. I'm quite sure that is not what was intended. I look forward to discussing this with you further and helping the International GeoGebra Institute and the GeoGebra developers continue to deliver high quality teaching tools. Please let me know how I can help you do this. kind regards Stuart [0] It is also difficult to argue that the properties and the java code can really have separate licences in any case, but that is orthogonal to the problems here. [1] http://cgit.scilab.org/cgit.cgi/scilab/tree/scilab/COPYING [2] http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en/download/
Dear Stuart, thank you for your message and interest in GeoGebra! We will discuss your questions with our legal team and will try to come back to you with a detailled answer soon. Have a good weekend, Manuela
Hi Stuart, Thank you for your email, and in particular for taking the time to write such a complete and thoughtful inquiry with regards to GeoGebra's license and terms of service. I wanted to send this note off to you now confirming receipt, and in advance of a fulsome response to your inquiry. The latter half of August is typically a very busy time here at the university, with preparations for the new academic year well under way. I will revert early September when I will be able to attend to this properly and in full, as I wish to ensure that GeoGebra retains its close ties and positive relationships with colleagues in the Debian and FLOSS communities. Kind regards, Markus
Hi Markus, thanks for your reply -- talk to you more once things settle down in the new academic year. regards Stuart
Dear Stuart, thank you again for your interest in GeoGebra and sorry for the delay in my response! We have put together a little license FAQ list on our website at http://www.geogebra.org/cms/license#FAQ to give a little bit more background on the details of our license for everyone interested. We hope that this also answers all your questions. The International GeoGebra Institute, our non-profit organization behind GeoGebra, is dedicated to the open source movement and collaboration with members of the FOSS community. Kind regards, Markus
Hi,
this is a rather disappointing outcome. Are there any plans how to
continue with this issue? Is it perhaps possible to get rid of the
non-free parts or re-create free drop-ins by the community?
Best regards,
Andi
Hello, commercial clause. Besides the fact that it seems invalid, it also ships Jlatexmath (which I co maintain) which is published under the GPL v2. As you can see on the Debian thread ( http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=692728 ), we contacted and exchanged with upstream. Since they didn't move, we contacted them privately to get more information and they replied with: "we've had our licence etc details checked by an experienced legal team and it's OK. Hopefully this is clear: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/license#FAQ" <http://www.geogebra.org/cms/license#FAQ> In particular, first sentence of their license ( http://www.geogebra.org/cms/license ) is non-free "You are free to copy, distribute and transmit GeoGebra for non-commercial purposes" Do you think their "experienced legal team" is right? Thanks Sylvestre
Section 7 of the GPL-3 (if it's not -3, there's a clause in other versions of the GPL as well) / | All other non-permissive additional terms are considered “further | restrictions” within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you | received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is | governed by this License along with a term that is a further | restriction, you may remove that term. [ snip ] \ Sounds like you can ignore their non-commercial clause. I'm sure their legal team thinks this is A-OK by them. Cheers, Paul
I see now that they claim their installer is the only non-commericial
thing. This seems like something you can just strip from their tarball.
In addition, from the GPL2/3:
| The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
| making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code
| means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
| associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control
| compilation and installation of the executable. [...]
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Cheery-bye,
Paul
OK. Thanks for the information. I am sorry I didn't provide the information but I am one of the maintainer of jlatexmath (Calixte Denizet, as cc being the main developer). We didn't provide any exemption. And, even if we want to do that (which we don't want), we could not since jlatexmath is a fork of jmathtex (GPL). We applied pressure and it didn't work. Thanks, Sylvestre
Sylvestre Ledru <sylvestre@debian.org> writes: If the program is a derived work of both the GPLed source code and the CC-BY-SAed language files, the resulting work has already been non-distributable before because the two licenses are incompatible. The new NC clause and the vague statements on the website only add insult to injury. You should contact Jlatexmath upstream to check whether they gave an exemption to geogebra. If not, they might want to apply some pressure. Hendrik
Internationalization files are derivative works if they internationalize strings that were created by someone else. And if those strings were part of an original GPL work there is potentially a license violation. But if they were created by the same author as the GPL program they are not derivative of anything. It's also going to be difficult to argue convincingly to a court that they must be under a license that is compatible with the rest of the program, they are arguably input to the program. So the real question here is whether Siylvestre's original text strings are translated in files under different licenses than his original versions. We'd like the GPL to stick to any works that are combined with the program in any way. Unfortunately case law from CAI v. Altai to Oracle v. Google has shot down that theory. This is ultimately good for Free Software in that we can do things like clone APIs, proprietary computer languages, and the overall functionality of programs only because licenses are not as effective as the software author would like them to be. Thanks Bruce
Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> writes: I'm not so sure about the last part as it heavily depends on the particular implementation. For gettext-style translations you are probably right, as you can remove the translation files and still have a working program. If *all* languages are equally stored in a separate file, then removing this file will stop the program from working. So the question is: How is this one in Geogebra? Anyway, the potentially infringing copy has been created by an Austrian organization and is hosted in Germany; U.S. case law is probably not too relevant here. Hendrik
Another file could be substituted for it, one created using a clean-room process so that we are certain it's not derivative, and the program would again operate and emit proper messages. So, we can't really use the fact that removing the file breaks the program to prove that all such files must be derivative of the program. While it would be nice to see European courts ruling against precedents of U.S. courts in matters of technology copyright, the reality is that European attorneys do include precedence from US cases in their arguments, and the courts quite often follow them. They aren't required to follow them the way a court in the same US circuit might have to, but nor do they shun looking at the findings of a foreign court in a similar case.
Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> writes: Oh, I think we're both talking about two different issues here. I'm not saying that language files are always a derivative of the source code of the program. Rather, I'm saying that the final product that is being distributed is a derivative of both the source code *and* the actual language file that is included in the distribution. So, assuming the source code is GPLed, it's fine to distribute a product based on the source code and a GPL-compatible language file (say, BSD-3) because the product as a whole can be distributed under the GPL. However, if the language file carries a GPL-incompatible license (such as CC-BY-SA), the resulting product cannot be distributed in a legal way. Hendrik
Dear Maintainer, Now, the latset version is #5. Thank you.
Hello Nicolas, It seems that the geogebra license [1] for the current version restricts it to non-commercial use only. This means that at best, it could only be included in the non-free section of the Debian archive. If you need version 5, you might try the upstream .deb packaging, documented here [2]. Cheers, tony [1] http://www.geogebra.org/download/license.txt [2] http://wiki.geogebra.org/en/Reference:GeoGebra_Installation#Linux
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Hi comrads, are there any news on GeoGebra licensing since 2014? Has any pressure been applied? https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=692728 Regards.