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

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Wed Jan 2 05:36:29 UTC 2013


Quoting Ken Arromdee (arromdee at rahul.net):

> On Mon, 31 Dec 2012, Rick Moen wrote:
> >I conclude that, in general, the overwhelming majority of such
> >entrepreneurs are thus seeking the crippling of competing commercial
> >reuse -- not just attribution.  So, OSI should give them the bum's rush.
> 
> Some people use ordinary GPL on libraries with the intent of crippling
> competing commercial reuse (since any competitors have to release
> their source and competitors wouldn't want to do that). 

Your premise that this in any way cripples commercial reuse -- by which
I of course meant _use in commerce_, not proprietising -- is simply not
the case.  (Moreover, so is your assumption that a competitor would be
automatically unwilling to release source, though that's not the main
point.  E.g., vTiger CRM upon release competed with its parent, the
weak-copylefted SugarCRM 1.0.  vtiger Systems (India) Private Limited
had no problem releasing its source code.)

You've gone rather far out of your way to misconstrue my phrase
'crippling of competing commercial reuse'.  This wasn't a very good use
of your time or mine.  




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