Bug#692728: Possible GPL violation: Geogebra

Paul Tagliamonte paultag at debian.org
Tue Jan 28 02:22:31 UTC 2014


On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 03:03:53AM -0800, Sylvestre Ledru wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 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.
> 
> As you can see on the Debian thread ( http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/
> bugreport.cgi?bug=692728 ), we contacted and exchanged with upstream.
> 
> Since they didn't move, we contacted them privately to get more information and
> they replied with:
> "we've had our licence etc details checked by an experienced legal team and
> it's OK. Hopefully this is clear: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/license#FAQ"
> In particular, first sentence of their license ( http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
> license ) is non-free
> "You are free to copy, distribute and transmit GeoGebra for non-commercial
> purposes"
> 
> Do you think their "experienced legal team" is right?

Section 7 of the GPL-3 (if it's not -3, there's a clause in other
versions of the GPL as well)

/
| All other non-permissive additional terms are considered “further
| restrictions” within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you
| received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is
| governed by this License along with a term that is a further
| restriction, you may remove that term. [ snip ]
\

Sounds like you can ignore their non-commercial clause. I'm sure their
legal team thinks this is A-OK by them.

Cheers,
  Paul

-- 
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