Bug#692728: GeoGebra licence and GPL violation

Mon Aug 19 11:56:09 UTC 2013

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

-- 
Dr. Markus Hohenwarter
GeoGebra | Founder & Managing Director
http://www.geogebra.org
--
Professor for Mathematics Education
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Stuart Prescott <stuart at debian.org> 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/   stuart at nanonanonano.net
> Debian Developer   http://www.debian.org/         stuart at debian.org
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