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 -- Manuela Hinterberger GeoGebra | Partner Support www.geogebra.org On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Stuart Prescott <[email protected]> wrote: > 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/ > > > -- > Stuart Prescott http://www.nanonanonano.net/ [email protected] > Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/ [email protected] > GPG fingerprint BE65 FD1E F4EA 08F3 23D4 3C6D 9FE8 B8CD 71C5 D1A8 > GPG fingerprint 90E2 D2C1 AD14 6A1B 7EBB 891D BBC1 7EBB 1396 F2F7 __ This is the maintainer address of Debian's Java team <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-java-maintainers>. Please use [email protected] for discussions and questions.
