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Single-company free software
Single-company free software
Posted Oct 12, 2005 18:02 UTC (Wed) by MathFox (subscriber, #6104)In reply to: Single-company free software by Ross
Parent article: Single-company free software
I am not a lawyer either, but IMO revocation of a written offer requires at least a written revocation. Thanks to the GPL every owner of a copy of the sourcecode has the right to redistribute and relicense. It won't be trivial to send out revocation notices to all redistributors of your code. It is more difficult than the RIAA and MPAA task to track P2P users, a John Doe lawsuit shouldn't work against someone who legimately distributes your code.
If you succeeded in taking this notification hurdle, the real legal fun will start. You will be asked to pay damages for revocation of distribution rights, people will object to revocation of their rights to use the code, etc. I can not tell beforehand how the lawsuits will work out in all relevant jurisdictions, I don't expect that you'll win the ~100 lawsuits easily.
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