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Revocable GPL (Groklaw)Revocable GPL (Groklaw)Posted Jan 29, 2008 9:35 UTC (Tue) by grantingram (subscriber, #18390)In reply to: Revocable GPL (Groklaw) by ncm Parent article: The Non-Revocable GPL (Groklaw) The question is, can you write something in a license that overrules what you decide later? Well one would hope so! To look at it the other way: you are suggesting that you can't rely on what is written in the license to describe what you can do with the code. Are you supposed to check with every copyright holder, every time you redistribute something just to see if they have changed their mind?
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Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Jan 29, 2008 20:33 UTC (Tue) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] I "would hope so" too, but hope is not the same as law. I can be utterly confident that code whose copyrights are held by the FSF remains free to distribute. For other code, I'm not sure.
Alternate Realities Posted Jan 29, 2008 23:52 UTC (Tue) by grantingram (subscriber, #18390) [Link] In your world where you can't rely on the license to describe the license for the code, how do you work out what the license is? If you are running a server offering software for download how often should you check to see if the authors have changed their minds? Daily? Hourly? We shall just have to agree to disagree on this one..
Alternate Realities Posted Jan 30, 2008 2:47 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] If you're ultimately scrupulous, you check before you put the code on your server. If you're practical, you just see if it's one of the packages that has been retracted, and see if you got a copy before that happened. If it is one, but you got in under the wire, you just change the license text you distribute with the package. If is is one, but you missed the boat, then you don't post it. Maybe you post a download-patch-build script that gets it from somebody who (still) has the right to distribute.
Alternate Realities Posted Jan 30, 2008 10:57 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] 'Somebody who still has the right to distribute'... however, they only have the right to distribute the work under the GPL - which explicitly says that you must distribute the work giving the recipient all the rights that you have. In your scenario, where person A 'still' has the right to distribute the software to person B but B does not have the right to distribute it further, the consequence is that A cannot distribute the software at all, since he cannot do so in compliance with the GPL.
Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Feb 1, 2008 21:42 UTC (Fri) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] Right, that's your angle. You really should have stated that up-front. It's all very well saying "I am not a lawyer" at the end of every post arguing that you're right anyway, but without actually having a proper legal opinion to offer, all you're doing with your insistence that your interpretation must be correct is FUDding (in the most literal sense). Stop it, please. If you aren't 100% sure of your ground (and your pains to point out that you aren't a lawyer suggest that you're at the very least aware that you *shouldn't* be), then you're far better advised to raise the question than to insist that you know the answer.
Revocable GPL (Groklaw) Posted Feb 2, 2008 6:11 UTC (Sat) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] I did state it up front: I don't know how serious the problem is. What I am certain of is that everybody who says they do know is either lying or deluded.
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