[License-discuss] License which requires watermarking? (Attribution Provision)

[John Cowan]

Rick Moen scripsit:

> As you have noticed, some firms have now adopted the clever if sleazy
> -- my interpretation -- ploy of purporting to use GPLv3 but sliding a
> mandatory badgeware notice requirement for every single UI page by
> claiming those are Additional Terms within the meaning of GPLv3 clause
> 7.
> 
> I personally think that is a total crock, and hope it gives rise to
> litigation at some point:  

It all hangs on the word "reasonable" in the definition of permitted
restrictions of type 7b: "Requiring preservation of specified
reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in
the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it."  As you
know, what is or is not reasonable is always going to be a tricky area.."
Such litigation would be not only a dubious battle but an expensive one.

-- 
It was dreary and wearisome.  Cold clammy winter still held sway in this
forsaken country.  The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark
greasy surfaces of the sullen waters.  Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed
up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers.
        --"The Passage of the Marshes"          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan