[electroly]

Notably, GNU Parallel did not relicense; it's still GPL. The author wants to have his cake (gain the popularity benefits of being a GPL-licensed GNU tool, be able to carpetbomb Stack Overflow with "use GNU Parallel" answers, etc.) and eat it too (get people to cite or pay him as a condition of using the product). Since this isn't possible (GPL doesn't allow additional restrictions), but the author still really wants it, he went the route of making the extra condition non-legally-binding but then getting publicly upset at people for using the product under its actual license. That's the part that GNU Parallel is doing that people don't like, and that other projects are not doing.

The startups you mention actually changed their license. That's what GNU Parallel would have to do to make this extra condition ok, but he won't do it because being a GPL-licensed GNU tool is critical to its popularity in the first place.

[dehrmann]

So if it's GPL, I can remove the citation bits, release it under the GPL as free-parallel, and everything's OK?

[electroly]

Yes. The GPL explicitly says this about "further restrictions":

> 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.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

However, this doesn't really even come into play because the citation request is not a restriction on the license. It's not anything. As far as the GPL is concerned, it's just some code, and the GPL grants you the right to redistribute modified copies.

And by renaming it to "free-parallel" you have respected the author's trademark. You can absolutely do this, at the cost of the author being upset at you. They might get upset that "free-parallel" is too close to their "GNU Parallel" trademark but I (IANAL) don't think they'd be legally right about that. GNU Parallel coexists with other software called "parallel".

[depaulagu]

Yep: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/parallel.git/tree/doc/cita...

[Atotalnoob]

Shouldn't gnu put a stop to this?

[electroly]

They ensured that the citation request was not actually an additional requirement and has no legal meaning. Beyond that, GNU's interests are better served by retaining GNU Parallel as a GPL-licensed GNU product than by losing it to another organization or another license. I wouldn't expect movement from GNU beyond their existing acknowledgement that the citation request is not a legal requirement and does not modify the GPL. In any event, GNU tends to be hands-off on contributed packages (i.e. the ones that Stallman wasn't involved in writing).