Possible GPL violation: Geogebra

Discussion:

Sylvestre Ledru

2014-01-28 11:03:53 UTC

Permalink

Hello,

Bruce Perens

2014-01-28 16:55:04 UTC

Permalink

Ian Stirling

2014-01-28 14:00:48 UTC

Permalink

Do you think their "experienced legal team" is right?

In short - of course not.
Addressing only GPLv2.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
'*4.* You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise
to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will
automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties
who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will
not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in
full compliance.
'*6.* Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions
on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not
responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.'

If they add clauses - they have essentially lost any right to distribute
it under the GPL - and are in exactly the same position as if they strip
the license and put (c) foocon - all rights reserved.

The recipient of such code - if it was originally licensed as GPL gains
a further license from the source, and can do whatever they wish. (they
are required to fix the license before distributing)

If there is original code distributed under this license - it's fine.
(in principle it's a violation of the licences copyright - but that's a
separate matter).

If you get 'mixed' code - then you cannot distribute it without getting
them to fix their license.

In principle, action can be taken against them by any contributor to the
GPL work in question.
Exactly what form that action will take, and prospects of success will vary.

Hendrik Weimer

2014-01-28 19:28:40 UTC

Permalink

Sylvestre Ledru <***@debian.org> writes:

Sylvestre Ledru

2014-01-29 04:34:35 UTC

Permalink

Bruce Perens

2014-01-29 16:36:22 UTC

Permalink

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

2014-01-29 21:29:29 UTC

Permalink

If *all* languages are equally stored in a separate file, then
removing this file will stop the program from working.

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.

Hendrik Weimer

2014-01-30 07:34:01 UTC

Permalink

Post by Bruce Perens

If *all* languages are equally stored in a separate file, then
removing this file will stop the program from working.

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

Bruce Perens

2014-01-30 16:02:07 UTC

Permalink

<html style="direction: ltr;">
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
<style type="text/css">body p { margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt; } </style>
</head>
<body style="direction: ltr;"
bidimailui-detected-decoding-type="latin-charset" text="#000000"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/29/2014 11:34 PM, Hendrik Weimer
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:***@mid.gienah.enyo.de" type="cite">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.
</blockquote>
<br>
It seems that you are using derivative in this case to indicate
combination of two things into a single program. In the copyright
law sense, a "derivative work" is one which incorporates copyrighted
work of a different legal entity (Sylvestre in this case) and
modifies it in some way to create a new copyrighted work in which
elements of the older work still exist. GPL uses the copyright law
sense of the word, because it depends on copyright law in order to
have the potential for enforcement.<br>
<br>
So, would a translation file be derivative of an executable program?
If they are literal translations of texts (strings) within the
original program that are copyrighted by a different legal entity,
probably they are. If they are created by the same person who
created those texts in the program, they are not a derivative work.<br>
<br>
Does the combination of the translation files and program elements
owned by other legal entities create a derivative work? Or are they
simply an aggregation? The verdict of the legal cases I mentioned
leads me to believe they are an aggregation. The aggregation may be
subject to compilation copyright but that isn't relevant to this
discussion.<br>
<br>
So, while we would like to be able to enforce the GPL terms on this
combination of things, there is a strong probability that the other
side would be able to convince a court that the law doesn't allow
the GPL to apply in this case.<br>
<br>
Before we have SFLC or some other entity attempt to enforce on
Sylvestre's behalf, we should have a stronger position from which to
argue.<br>
<br>
In the meantime, you can render the bad guys irrelevant by creating
a GPL-compliant installer and GPL-compliant translation files, and
distributing the same. This will be 100 times more effective than
attempting to prosecute a weak legal case.<br>
<br>
    Thanks<br>
<br>
    Bruce<br>
</body>
</html>

Hendrik Weimer

2014-01-29 17:57:54 UTC

Permalink

Post by 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.

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