Bug#764814: freecad downloads and executes code

[Francesco Poli]

On Sat, 11 Oct 2014 14:43:30 -0300 Yorik van Havre wrote:

> Hi,

Hello Yorik,
I noticed this bug report and I felt the need to comment.

You probably remember me as the one who originally reported the
OpenCASCADE licensing issues for the freecad Debian package.
If anyone is interested in reading the whole "odyssey", please take a
look at the (very long) bug log [1].

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/617613

> 
> This download happens the first time a user wants to use the DXF
> import/export feature. Since the license of our DXF exporter is GPL, and
> other components of FreeCAD prevent from linking to GPL code (namely
> OpenCasCade and Coin3D) (the whole story is another Debian bug),

As you may remember, Coin3D has been re-licensed under the terms of the
3-clause BSD license [2][3].

[2] https://bugs.debian.org/617613#153
[3] https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/c/coin3/copyright-3.1.4~abc9f50-7

But, above all, the good news is that OpenCASCADE is no longer
GPL-incompatible [4], hence there's no need to avoid GPL-licensed code
in freecad now!

[4] https://bugs.debian.org/680738#32
[5] https://bugs.debian.org/680738#37

> we found
> this trick of moving the dxf exporter out of the FreeCAD sources, and
> placing it online, so it can be downloaded by users the first time they
> need it.
[...]

I am not convinced about the soundness of this "trick", but, as I said
above, I think it's not needed anymore.

I hope this helps.
Bye.


-- 
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 fsck is a four letter word...
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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