Comment 2 for bug 1779764

Revision history for this message
ole.tange (n-launchpad-net-tange-dk) wrote :

Funding a free software project is hard. GNU parallel is no exception. On top of that it seems the less visible a project is, the harder it is to get funding. And the nature of GNU Parallel is that it will never be seen by "the guy with the checkbook", but only by the people doing the actual work.

This problem has been covered by others - though no solution has been found:
https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintainer
https://www.numfocus.org/blog/why-is-numpy-only-now-getting-funded/

Before implementing the citation notice it was discussed with the users:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/parallel/2013-11/msg00006.html

Having to run 'parallel --citation' once is no doubt not an ideal solution, but no one has so far come up with an ideal solution - neither for funding GNU parallel nor other free software.

If you believe you have the perfect solution, you should try it out, and if it works, you should post it on the email list. Ideas that will cost work and which have not been tested are, however, unlikely to be prioritized.

Please note that GPL version 3 gives you the right to fork GNU Parallel under a new name, but it does not give you the right distribute modified copies with the citation notice disabled under the name GNU Parallel. To do that you need to be the owner of the GNU Parallel trademark.

Description of the xt:Commerce case in OLG Duesseldorf
http://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/GERMANYGeneralPublicLicenseDoesNotPermitUseofThird-PartyTrademarksforAdvertisingModifiedVersionsofOpen-SourceSoftware.aspx

The verdict in German
https://www.admody.com/urteilsdatenbank/cafe6fdaeed3/OLG-Duesseldorf_Urteil_vom_28-September-2010_Az_I-20-U-41-09

Examples of other software limiting derivatives by the same name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_derivatives#Legal_aspects
https://tm.joomla.org/trademark-faq.html
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/faq/

Running 'parallel --citation' one single time should take less than 10 seconds to do, and will disable the citation notice. If that is too much trouble for you, why not use one of the alternatives instead? See a list in: 'man parallel_alternatives'