linux-kernel - Re: Fwd: That whole "Linux stealing our code" thing

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Date:	Mon, 3 Sep 2007 15:04:17 -0400
From:	Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@...er.net>
To:	Krzysztof Halasa <khc@...waw.pl>
Cc:	davids@...master.com,
	"Linux-Kernel@...r. Kernel. Org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Fwd: That whole "Linux stealing our code" thing

On Monday 03 September 2007 14:26:29 Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
> Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@...er.net> writes:
> > The fact
> > remains that the person making a work available under *ANY* form of
> > copyright
> > license has the right to revoke said grant of license to anyone.
>
> Not after the licence has been given and accepted (and there might be
> restrictions), unless of course the licence contained such reservation.

I hate to belabor the point, but you seem to be making the mistake of "The 
license applies to the copyright holder" that I've seen a lot of people make 
(and kept quiet about).

The person holding the copyright has all the legal standing to revoke a 
license grant at any time. Licenses such as the GPL are not signed contracts, 
and that means there are limits to what effect they can have on the copyright 
holder.

If the license was of the "signed contract" type, or contained text stating 
that the copyright holder was giving up all rights of revocation (etc...) I 
could agree with you. As it stands, no "Open Source" license that I have seen 
used on a major project contains any part that does that. In fact, the GPL is 
the only license I can name (offhand) that even touches on the rights of the 
copyright holder - and then it is in the form of "If you do X, Y or Z all 
rights granted under this license are automatically revoked".

That is an "automatic clause" - not a limitation stating that the copyright 
holder can only revoke under those conditions. The person holding the 
copyright has quite a few rights - more than people believe - and not even 
the most generous of Open Source licenses (except those that contain text 
like "granted in perpetuity" or similar) even come close to being exempt from 
the holder of the copyright not being able to summarily revoke a given 
persons license.

DRH

-- 
Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful.
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