LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : Mark Newton <newton@atdot.dotat.org>
  Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 14:43:58 +0930

Re: GPL question

On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 02:34:53PM +0930, Mark Newton wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 03:12:08PM +0930, Matthew Geddes wrote:
> 
>  > If a person were to make a whole bunch of contributions to a GPL'd
>  > project (a considerable amount) and then (for whatever reason) decides
>  > to fork off with a copy of the code (which is fine, under the GPL), but
>  > then demands the original team stop using his code, what happens? I
>  > would be tempted to believe that the person would be out of luck, but
>  > what do you all think?
> 
> As long as the original license doesn't expire, the original licensees
> would be able to make a choice between continuing under the terms of the
> valid, legal, and non-expired original license, or revoking that license
> and accepting the new (non-)distribution terms.
> 
> Each licensee would be able to make their own decision.


Mark,

I think I see a subtle difference between your and my opinion here.
Whereas I was saying that you can't revoke a licence, you seem to be
saying that you can. You also spell licence in the US fashion.
Is it maybe that US licenses can be revoked whereas Australian
and UK licences cannot?
Or is it more complex than that?
Or do you mean that the authors could get together and
decide to release _future_ distributions under a new licence?

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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