A defense against license revocation is the existence of a contractual relationship between the copyright-owner and the licensee.
However, where no such relationship exists, no such protection is apparent.
Obeying a preexisting legal duty (such as to not commit copyright infringement by using/modifying/etc a work without permission) is insufficient to create a contract.
Illusory promises are not binding upon the grantor.
For those who have chosen to not pay the Grantor of a "G" "P" "L" (GPL) license, the license can be revocated at the will of the copyright owner.
""retroactively""
Remeber: non-exclusive licenses do not transfer any rights. Only permissions (license), which can be revoked, and without a contractual agreement such revocations do not give rise to damages against the Copyright owner.
Nothing gets you nothing.
>WE'RE GOING TO DISBAR YOU, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE LICENSED FOR LONG.
Nothing's sure. Even with solid law, you can still fuck yourself with improper strategy. What you need is a good paralegal, in addition to being correct on the law.
Jason Green
Yes, you can revoke the GPL on a project. Retroactively? Depends on what that entails. If you want to stop releasing source code and start claiming all the free copies you gave out are copyright infringement, you're probably gonna have a bad time. But if you want to move towards a license that is better suited to your business model and you don't care about what people do with the old public versions, I think you'll be fine. I say this as a federally recognized attorney of the highest order, rank-and-file have all my hashtags and everything.
Christian Diaz
>removing the price tag of code so you can put a moral tag on it and decide who gets to use it based on whether they pander to enough minorities or not No, free software should be absolutely free without the ability to revoke "licenses" that do not exist. However, the entire structure behind modern IP laws should be destroyed as well and companies should stop relying on big daddy state to protect the ideas that they plagiarized from society.
Wyatt Miller
So if you contributed to, say, Linux early and some of your code is deep insidem depended on by many other contribution, you can just revoke your contribution and fuck up the whole project?
Carter Anderson
>So if you contributed to, say, Linux early and some of your code is deep insidem depended on by many other contribution, you can just revoke your contribution and fuck up the whole project?
Yes. You can do that.
Camden Bailey
Are we in for a ride?
Austin Hernandez
>If you want to stop releasing source code and start claiming all the free copies you gave out are copyright infringement, you're probably gonna have a bad time.
You won't be wrong, legally, to do so, provided that the entities that you revoke the license from never payed you anything (most of them haven't).
It's only the entities that have tendered good bargained-for consideration that can rely on any "promise not to revoke" or "this is how (and only this) revocations take place" language in the text, since the license text has then merged into the licensing contract.
The freeloaders do not have a contract.
Chase Jenkins
It's up to the linux copyright holders to decide that. They're the ones who can revoke from non-paying licensees.
"I agree not to commit copyright infringement and thus will only modify/redistribute your work under the allowed usage" is not good consideration, is something many "open-source CoC" proponents do not seem to grasp.
Mason Miller
No what I mean is revoke your contribution from Linux itself, and not from some project that uses Linux.
Jonathan Cook
Please don't reddit space over 4 lines, it hurts the eyes
Carter Campbell
Yes, the linux programmers, those who own copyright to their works, can revoke their "contributions" to Linux itself.
They can do so for all future versions of Linux (kernel).
They can also do so for all past versions of linux (kernel).
They did not contribute anything except for permission to use their copyrighted material in a certain way. Which they can rescind from those not in privity of contract with them.
Dominic Turner
Has GNU addressed the possibility of that, and what is their plan for dealing with it?
Justin Gutierrez
a link to some precedent perhaps?
Justin Phillips
>reddit spacing this hard kys
Blake Butler
when you revoke the license you can't do it retroactively, if the code was already distributed under GPL all you are doing is saying any new version is no longer GPL. The way the GPL is designed, if you revoke the license, whatever the last public version was is usable and modifiable by anyone as long as they release it under GPL and clearly mark that they modified it.
Lincoln Jackson
Trend is to turn pay into free.
Leo Ortiz
Not true, you enter an implicit contract the moment you start using a product with a free license. Note that I've said product, not service. Services can very much update their terms and conditions, and frequently do so. Equally the creator can change the conditions and licensing on updates or new versions of a product. You can't be revoked a free license for a product you're already using though.
Matthew White
GNU requires contributors to assign the FSF as the copyright holder.
