Re: Final text of GPL v3 (original) (raw)

On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 11:03:03AM +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:

Iain Nicol wrote:

If this interpretation were true, then the only burden of this section would be to keep the legal notices in the user interfaces that you keep, but you would not be required to add any notices to any user interface, regardless of whether you wrote the interface or not.

My interactions with the FSF regarding the GPLv3 process, and this clause, have led me to believe that this is not their intent. Their intent is that any new interfaces (added by people who are not the copyright holder on the entire work) must have ALNs.

Can we dub GPLv3 "GPL with the advertising clause" then? And the advertising clause is a lot, lot worse than for 4-clause BSD one -- instead of just "advertising materials" which in free software there usually none, GPLv3 forces us to vomit legal crap right in the face of every single user, even at a cost to functionality. While for GUI apps having an "About" menu item is usually not an issue, legal notices are a significant burden for console stuff, both full-screen and line-based. And just think about software which communicates using voice (hands-free things, for example).

Could the FSF be asked for an official statement? Because if the interpretation you mentioned is what they want, GPLv3 is SCARY.

-- 1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor: // Never attribute to stupidity what can be // adequately explained by malice.

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