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If I want to use diagrams I created using GeoGebra in a dissertation or paper, how do I properly credit/give attribution? The terms of service say:

We grant you permission to use the Website Content under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike licence (version 3.0 or later), the current text of which can be found via this link. Attribution (as required by that Creative Commons license) should take the form of (at least) a mention of our name, an appropriate copyright notice and a link to our website located at https://www.geogebra.org.

Use of existing "authored" materials published on our website are similarly subject to attribution, to include the name of the author(s) and link or hyperlink to the material itself. For example, "Created with GeoGebra, by [name of author of material]".

It would seem tedious and distracting to write "Created using GeoGebra (www.geogebra.org) under CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0" in every figure caption. Would it be acceptable to include a note on the List of Figures page, either mentioning the specific figures or just "some figures were created using..."? Or the Acknowledgements page?

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    I’m not familiar with GeoGebra, but from the part you quoted, I would think the license doesn’t apply to graphs you made yourself with the tool, as these don’t seem to be "website content" or "existing authored materials", no? Or does the tool allow to use such materials, and your graphs contains them?
    – unor
    Commented Apr 22, 2019 at 17:39
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    @unor Ahh, I misunderstood the terms. I think you're right. As long as it's for non-commercial purposes, it looks like I don't need to attribute them for diagrams I make.
    – binaryfunt
    Commented Apr 22, 2019 at 17:52
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    I agree with the findings of @unor after reading the license terms. geogebra.org/license
    – FuzzyLeapfrog
    Commented Apr 22, 2019 at 21:52
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    IANAL, but the Geogebra license seems just bogus to me. There is no such thing as "GPL for noncommercial purposes only".
    – Federico Poloni
    Commented Aug 14, 2019 at 19:05
  • @FedericoPoloni It does, but it isn’t Free Software. At least it’s not as bad as the JSON licence that states “GNU but it has to be used for Good and not Evil”. gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#JSON
    – nick012000
    Commented Aug 16, 2019 at 0:25

3 Answers 3

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Let me preface this by saying I am not a lawyer, and everything I say is just my interpretation of the license they give based on my experience with open source software licensing.

First of all, you have to look at what is being licensed. In the license term you posted (which is term 3), it is referring to "Website Content" as being under the CC-NC-SA 3.0+ license. In term 2 of the license, the term "Website Content" is defined to be:

The materials on our Websites, such as documents, files, text and graphics ("Website Content") are protected by copyright laws, trade mark laws and treaties around the world, and all intellectual property rights in the Website Content are the property of GeoGebra, Inc. or a third party associated with us. All such rights are reserved. "GEOGEBRA" and other proprietary marks are trade marks of the International GeoGebra Institute or GeoGebra, Inc.

So in my reading, license term 3 only applies to items posted and provided for you on the actual GeoGebra website that were created by others (such as GeoGebra themselves or other contributors). That means I don't think any works that you create using the tool will be included in that license term, and therefore not subject to the CC-NC-SA 3.0+ they used.

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In terms of academic integrity, if you:

  • created a graphic yourself
  • using a software tool

then you would not cite the software tool.

For example, if you prepared your paper in Microsoft Word, possibly using the drawing tools, you would not cite Word or give Microsoft credit.

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  • Legalities of software licenses are off-topic here.
    – Anonymous Physicist
    Commented Jan 1, 2022 at 0:52
  • I think there's a threshold for the "nicheness" of a visualization tool needing to be cited. ggplot2, probably not (although it would never hurt), but something field-specific very well should be.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Jan 1, 2022 at 1:41
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You just add yourself as the source (Like - 'Source: Self elaborated with X software using data from...') in the citation and then in the methods you mention which software you used.

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