Licensing confusion

[aendra-rininsland]

Hi there!

First of all -- great plugin. I'm using SigmaExporter to build a visualization for a major news org, it really fills the gap between Sigma.js and Gephi.

Second of all, what license is it actually under? Both GPLv3 and the CDDLv1 are included in this repo; the Gephi plugin page says GPLv3, and a CC-Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike link is placed on generated output.

Though I haven't read the CDDL, GPLv3 and most CC licenses are incompatible. Further, requiring a CC license for my project means that I'll have to find some other plugin to export my data (For-profit news org using a copyrighted data set won't work with any CC license).

Any thoughts? Did I just miss something in some documentation somewhere? Any help would be great. Thanks!

[jthrilly]

Hi! Thanks for taking an interest in the plugin :)

I think the confusion you are having comes from the fact that there are two licensing 'frames' being discussed here: 1) the license of the plugin itself 2) the license of the output the plugin produces.

On the license covering the plugin source-code itself, I think it is fair to say that this is unambiguously a GLPv3 project. @computermacgyver is the primary author and he will chime in to correct me if I am wrong here.

The license that applies to the content produced by the plugin is a different matter. The plugin output is based on a JISC funded project to create open source and interoperable interactive tools for researchers to disseminate their findings with. We based much of the code on a prior implementation which was CC licensed, and we felt it was in-keeping with the spirit of the project to retain this automatic license in our output. HOWEVER, this is not to say that you cannot remove the attribution and replace it with your own license in certain circumstances. Without consulting with @computermacgyver it is hard to agree outright to this, but in principle I don't see a problem with it, I don't see an issue as long as you aren't selling it directly.

One other option would be to just export gexf from gephi, and then use vanilla sigma.js. You would then be free from licensing issues related to our plugin or sigma interface.

[aendra-rininsland]

Hi! Thanks for the response. That makes more sense, was thinking it was something of that nature. I'll wait for a response from @computermacgyver, but failing being able to change the license, I'll at very least use your JSON exporter if I need to build my own implementation using vanilla Sigma.js (The GEXF export seems to remove edge IDs for some bizarre reason...).

Thanks!

[computermacgyver]

Hi Ændrew,

Thanks for raising this and apologies for the confusion. @jthrilly is correct on the all fronts.

Plugin Java source code is GPLv3 / CDDL to be consistent with the whole of Gephi.

The HTML/JS/CSS written for the output is CC-Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike at the moment.

I would like to produce output that can be used commercially but the current CC license is there because:

• I haven't checked through the licenses of all the libraries we use but know that at least fancybox is CC-Non-Commercial
• the original inspiration came from a CC licensed work, now offline unfortunately

I think fancybox might be the only commercially-restricted library, which would be easy to work around. The larger issue is needing to do a full code audit and make nothing is left from the original cc licensed code. I haven't had the time to do this which means the CC license is likely to stay for a little while yet. Modifying the output in whatever way you'd like is fine to do. I'm happy to talk individually to see if there are some components you might use commercially --- it's just a lack of time to be able to release the whole thing under a commercially friendly license right now.

[computermacgyver]

P.S. I have a few edits to JSONExporter that should make it a bit more robust. I'll try to release the newest version this coming weekend.

[NoahGordon]

Hi, I just wanted to find out if there were any updates on the output licensing?

[computermacgyver]

Hi Noah,

I replied more in an email to you already, but want to reply here too for everyone to be able to see. Fancybox is the only restricted library in the package and is relatively easy to work around. The code audit for reliance of anything on the former CC work is more time that I have at the moment. Although it moves away from Sigma, I have found this framework (https://github.com/raphv/gexf-js) which is MIT-licensed and hence available for commercial use. I am thinking that incorporating this as a commercially viable option into the exporter would possible be good? I welcome comments on the linked repository.

[NoahGordon]

Hey Scott- yeah, that would work. gexf-js is not nearly as smooth as your plugin, which is why I prefer not to use it- neither are the other export plugins. But if you can replace Fancybox with the parts of gexf-js than that would be great!

[audvin]

Hi all,

Thanks for the explanation regarding licensing. I'm also in a situation where I would love to use this tool, but I'm in a mostly for-profit environment.

Do I understand these issues correctly that if I either purchase a license for FancyBox (via their website) or customize this project to remove FancyBox, that there is no other known licensing issues?