Bug#692728: Possible GPL violation: Geogebra

[Bruce Perens]

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

On January 28, 2014 11:28:40 AM PST, Hendrik Weimer <hendrik at enyo.de> wrote:
>Sylvestre Ledru <sylvestre at debian.org> writes:
>
>> From it last few releases, geogebra is released under GPL with a non
>> commercial clause.
>>
>> Besides the fact that it seems invalid, it also ships Jlatexmath
>(which I co
>> maintain) which is published under the GPL v2.
>
>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

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