[rlpb]

> and the citation notice is a one-time thing you can silence permanently

This doesn't scale. Imagine if all the software you used nagged you and had their own individual methods to silence them. I don't think this would be reasonable.

What makes this particular software so special?

[repiret]

Lots of software nags with something when it first starts up. It’s mostly annoying, but doesn’t seem to have a scaling problem.

zsh gives you a config wizard, sudo admonishes you to use it responsibly, just about every iOS app and an increasing number of desktop apps gives you a few pages of “what’s new” every time they’re upgraded. Desktop apps have given tips-on-startup since the 90s.

[dahart]

I agree, and I think I might have even used this argument before. ;)

It does scale solely for GNU Parallel though for now, and very few other people have taken the same tack as GNU Parallel’s citation notice. Despite the potential for a slippery slope, it doesn’t seem to be happening. I’d speculate that if it did start to happen, then GNU would change their stance on what’s allowed by the license, perhaps.

[shakow]

> This doesn't scale.

--will-cite

[imtringued]

There is a difference between "will cite" and being in a situation that warrants citing.

[paulmd]

sure, but the other guy wants me to submit a picture in a funny hat, not a citation. and the third guy wants me to add some additional legal provisions and disclaimers to the GPL license.

you need a more generalized --clickwrap-consent parameter really. One that just says "whatever it is, I accept and I'll do it".

And that's exactly the thing GPL was supposedly founded to get away from. Restrictions on user freedoms. Especially violations so routine and tedious that we open-palm-slam "accept" without reading them.

You could absolutely write this to not look like a clickwrap agreement and lean on users. "please cite me, I'm an academic and impact matters" in the manfile or --help is not something anyone would ever get upset about or probably even patch to remove.

The only reason it's OK is because basically everyone knows it's not enforceable because of the severability part of the GPL. But it's blatantly designed to look like a serious and enforceable notice to users who don't know that, and require affirmative action from the user to "consent" and bypass the screen. And clickwrap agreements of this type are generally enforceable if there is not something like the GPL that allows you to ignore it.

like I flatly do not get why this is even debatable or questionable, the dude is trying to pull a fast one on users with a scary-sounding legal notice that implies that you need to accept this clickwrap agreement. and it's not entirely clear that he cannot actually burden you with this in all jurisdictions, since it's an agreement between you and the author that exists outside the actual source code/distribution. You can end up paying for free stuff in lots of places in life, if you're not aware about what "should" be free, and those agreements stand and are enforceable even though the thing was supposed to be free. You agreed to it. You don't have to, the GPL says that, you can edit the software to remove it without consenting, but you did accept it.

Letting the camel's nose under the tent on clickwrap agreements on GPL'd software is such an incredibly bad idea legally and morally, and this dude has been an utter dick about anyone who questions that. Sure, "he's willing to do it and nobody else is stepping up" but on the other hand he's also going off and attacking other maintainers doing their jobs, too. But that's not Stallman's problem I guess. That's another problem that only works with N=1 jerk, if that was normalized we'd have a problem.

I do not get why this guy is getting this special blessing or dispensation from FSF. Like it's not just that he's a random weirdo releasing under GPL and then trying to add additional terms (lol get stuffed), this is all occurring with the FSF's blessing, Stallman's signoff, and in the GNU distribution. Official GNU clickwrap license I guess.

At the end of the day - if the guy can't be satisfied with a polite request in the manfile, wow that sucks. But the GPL isn't about you, it's about the end user. There are explicitly licenses like BSD that require acknowledgement if that's your thing!