Re: Can a recipients rights under GNU GPL be revoked?

[Ivan Ivanov]

Yes: The linux devs can rescind their license grant. GPLv2 is a bare
license and is revocable by the grantor. Search for "vsnsdualce" "gpl"
online to find his messages which prove that, he is a lawyer and has
investigated this subject very well. I am CC'ing him in case you'd
like to request more information. So if you didn't like the Code of
Conduct covertly accepted behind the scenes against your will, and
maybe some other questionable political decisions in technical
projects (e.g. the recent removal of useful "weboob" package which
have been a part of Debian for 8 years but got removed just because
some mad SJWs suddenly got offended at its' name) - well you know what
to do, and maybe vsnsdualce will be happy to help with your case free
of charge.

Best regards,
Ivan Ivanov

ÐÑ, 27 ÑÐÐ. 2019 Ð. Ð 17:55, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@xxxxxxx>:
>
> Hi,
>
> Ben Finney wrote:
> > > In other words: Any copyright holder can *say* they wish to
> > > retroactively revoke the GNU GPL to some party.
>
> Well, everybody is free to express wishes. But a granted license with no
> applicable revocation clause is irrevocable.
>
> The copyright holders alltogether are entitled to grant any license
> they can agree on (and that is not illegal or legally void).
> E.g. they can grant non-GPL licenses for their GPLed software.
>
> What they cannot do is to revoke granted GPL on published versions.
>
>
> rhkramer@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > I believe that the
> > original author of a package could do something like create further
> > modifications to the code and create a non-free version of the code.
>
> An example is the cdrecord-wodim fork. The copyright holders did not
> release newer versions of cdrecord under GPL. So some concerned Debian
> developers used an earlier GPLed version as base of their fork named
> wodim.
>
> > Assuming that is correct, people using (or basing modifications) on the
> > (presumably) older free version could continue to use and develop based on
> > that, but would not have rights to that new non-free version.
>
> I agree and practical examples show that we are not alone.
>
> The copyright of the original authors remains, so that the forkers cannot
> change the old license until they replaced all copyrightable imaterial of
> the original authors.
>
>
> Have a nice day :)
>
> Thomas
>