isorox's Journal: GPLV3 License problem

The FSF has often believed the "obnoxious BSD advertising clause" in the original BSD license was a problem.

That's a fine opinion. Imagine my surprise when I had cause to investigate a GPLV3 license peculiarity, which allows a developer to do the exact same thing! Between section 5 and 7, it allows a gui developer to splatter advertising over a GPLV3 product, and require that you not remove it. The issue cropped up a few months ago for the excellent project.

I refused to believe it. I was always under the impression that a user could do whatever they wanted with a GPL project, as long as they offered the same rights to whoever they gave a copy too. Sadly the FSF disagree, at least according to their wonderful team of volunteers.
Section 7 of GPLv3 is, I believe, an attempt to balance the needs of authors and recipients/users

I was always under the impression the GPL was about protecting rights of users, above all else, it seems that under v3, that's no longer the case. A shame, but in future I'll have to be very careful about the difference between free licenses (gplv2, modern bsd, etc) and non-free licenses (gplv3).