GPL revocation (GPC-Slots 2): Alex "Skud" Bayley, Leigh Honeywell

From: sicevar
Date: Fri Jan 18 2019 - 07:16:43 EST


Quote:

"
Then you should have used them.
Not necessary, the language used in the press release identifies them easily.

should
As if I somehow can't just rescind using their names either.

License to use/modify/etc the GPC Slots 2 code is hereby terminated for. Alex "Skud" Bayley, and Leigh Honeywell.
(Note: this termination is not to be construed as a lifting of the previously issued termination regarding the "Geek Feminism collective", this termination is an addendum)

--MikeeUSA-- (electronic signature :D )

1019403
Their response is irrelevant.
"

Discussions with author of program involved:
http://8ch.net/tech/res/1013409.html
http://8ch.net/tech/res/1017824.html
http://8ch.net/tech/res/1018729.html
------------------------

https://slashdot.org/submission/9087542/author-recinds-gpl

------------------------
p46 "As long as the project continues to honor the terms of the licenses under which it recieved contributions, the licenses continue in effect. There is one important caveat: Even a perpetual license can be revoked. See the discussion of bare licenses and contracts in Chapter 4"
--Lawrence Rosen

p56 "A third problem with bare licenses is that they may be revocable by the licensor. Specifically, /a license not coupled with an interest may be revoked./ The term /interest/ in this context usually means the payment of some royalty or license fee, but there are other more complicated ways to satisfy the interest requirement. For example, a licensee can demonstrate that he or she has paid some consideration-a contract law term not found in copyright or patent law-in order to avoid revocation. Or a licensee may claim that he or she relied on the software licensed under an open source license and now is dependent upon that software, but this contract law concept, called promissory estoppel, is both difficult to prove and unreliable in court tests. (The concepts of /consideration/ and /promissory estoppel/ are explained more fully in the next section.) Unless the courts allow us to apply these contract law principles to a license, we are faced with a bare license that is revocable.
--Lawrence Rosen

p278 "Notice that in a copyright dispute over a bare license, the plaintiff will almost certainly be the copyright owner. If a licensee were foolish enough to sue to enforce the terms and conditions of the license, the licensor can simply revoke the bare license, thus ending the dispute. Remeber that a bare license in the absence of an interest is revocable."
--Lawrence Rosen

Lawrence Rosen - Open Source Licensing - Sofware Freedom and Intellectual property Law



p65 "Of all the licenses descibed in this book, only the GPL makes the explicity point that it wants nothing of /acceptance/ of /consideration/:
...
The GPL authors intend that it not be treated as a contract. I will say much more about this license and these two provisions in Chapter 6. For now, I simply point out that the GPL licensors are in essentially the same situation as other open source licensors who cannot prove offer, acceptance, or consideration. There is no contract."
--Lawrence Rosen

------------------------
David McGowan, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School:

"Termination of rights

[...] The most plausible assumption is that a developer who releases code under the GPL may terminate GPL rights, probably at will.

[...] My point is not that termination is a great risk, it is that it is not recognized as a risk even though it is probably relevant to commercial end-users, accustomed to having contractual rights they can enforce themselves.