Dear Edward, > I know others have already said it, but: > This is legally nonsense. The only way I can revoke someone's rights to > my code under the GPL is if they violate the terms of the GPL.
this aspect of FOSS licenses has -- to the best of my knowledge -- never been tested in court. Actually, the Free Software Foundation felt compelled to clarify this point in GPLv3 and there is a thread on StackOverflow acknowledging the possibility of revoking a license [1]. Finally, revoking the license may very well be possible in some jurisdictions but not all of them, e.g., Australia [2]. There are 195 independent states in this world and I do not think you can make such a broad claim if it has never been legally contested before. By the way your e-mail is violating the code of coduct. > This is legally nonsense. You are not empathic towards others and respectful of differing viewpoints. > In short, "unconditionedwitness", please shut up. You're not helping. The comment is derogatory if not downright offensive. [1] https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/832/is-a-copyright-license-by-default-revocable-or-irrevocable [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20091024034824/http://www.ilaw.com.au/public/licencearticle.html Sincerely Christoph Conrads On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 23:57:15 +0100 Edward Cree <ec...@cantab.net> wrote: > On 20/09/18 10:27, unconditionedwitn...@redchan.it wrote: > > Contributors can, at any time, rescind the license grant regarding their > > property via written notice to those whom they are rescinding the grant > > from (regarding their property (code)). > > I know others have already said it, but: > This is legally nonsense. The only way I can revoke someone's rights to > my code under the GPL is if they violate the terms of the GPL. If I > were to do so otherwise, then _I_ would be in violation for having > distributed derived works of the kernel without a GPL, not to mention > the obvious reliance/estoppel problems. > > Moreover, even if I _could_ revoke the license, I wouldn't want to do > so; it would be ridiculously petty in itself and the precedent it would > set would be destructive to the entire open-source community, about > which I care deeply. It is _because_ Linux and other open-source > projects are so important to humanity that I spoke up about what I > perceive as a threat to it. > > In short, "unconditionedwitness", please shut up. You're not helping.
