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Copyright infringement by German contact tracing app

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Re: Copyright infringement by German contact tracing app

#3

Post by Tomte »

TrueTom wrote: post #2

Clarification: This isn't the official German contact tracing app.

This is an official tracing app in several states in Germany, and probably soon in all of Germany.

You're talking about the older Corona Warn App which does similar things (and is generally considered too limited), but without direct data transfer to public health authorities. That's what the Luca app does.

Warn App is more for chance encounters tracking a person meeting other people.

Luca is more for checking in and out of stores and other locations.

[Edit: I stand by every single word, in case people doubt it.]

Re: Copyright infringement by German contact tracing app

#4

Post by fabian2k »

TrueTom wrote: post #2

Clarification: This isn't the official German contact tracing app.

The app (Luca) that allegedly copied code from the linked one is used officially in some places in Germany (or at least some states/cities bought it, not sure how much actual use there is yet). It is not the main app for contact tracing (CWA).

Re: Copyright infringement by German contact tracing app

#6

Post by moooo99 »

This is not the official contract tracing app (that one can be found here https://github.com/corona-warn-app), its a commercial product that's only been "open sourced" under pressure of the public. Their service was financed be the same public figures that are now heavily pushing for its use.

And as one comment in the linked GitHub issue states, calling their license "open source" is really more of a marketing joke. Although the seem to have changed their restrictive license [1] to the GPL License [2]

Edit: Although its not the official apps, its heavily used by some official instances such as the health departments of some cities/states. The Luca app is financed by those departments purchasing a license. According to news, some licenses cost around 440k€ of taxpayer money [3]

[1] https://gitlab.com/lucaapp/android/-/commit/a30432ec4a01c2ca...

[2] https://gitlab.com/lucaapp/android/-/commit/4433884f00462bae...

[3] (German) https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/mecklenburg-vorpo...

Re: Copyright infringement by German contact tracing app

#8

Post by cygx »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #5

Germany has got to be the worst place to try this crap, given how many GPL violations are prosecuted through their courts.

The code is permissively licensed (2-clause BSD according to the LICENSE file, 3-clause BSD according to the comment in the source file).

Re: Copyright infringement by German contact tracing app

#10

Post by makepanic »

Tomte wrote: post #3
TrueTom wrote: post #2

Clarification: This isn't the official German contact tracing app.

This is an official tracing app in several states in Germany, and probably soon in all of Germany. You're talking about the older Corona Warn App which does similar things (and is generally considered too limited), but without direct data transfer to public health authorities. That's what the Luca app does. Warn App is more for chance encounters tracking a person meeting other people. Luca is more for checking in and…

The cwa app will support event registration in the next version too.

See https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/blob/ma... for details on how they do it.

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