On Sun, May 20, 2001 at 07:43:10PM -0700, George wrote: > On Sun, May 20, 2001 at 07:59:16PM -0500, Sam TH wrote: > > This is actually an important question, since the code that is (c) > > Eazel will likely go to creditors/VCs, at which point the source > > license could be revoked. This would mean we would lose Nautilus as a > > part of the GNOME project, which we can all agree would be a terrible > > loss. Of course, this is unlikely, since significant work would have > > to be put into expunging the code not copyrighted to Eazel, and since > > most failed code just gets ignored (fortunately not the case here), > > but it would be a very bad thing. > > As far as I understand copyright law you cannot revoke a license. All that > the creditors could do is release a new version that could be proprietary > (sans all non-eazel copyrighted code of course), this is highly unlikely and > doesn't affect us one bit. This is incorrect. Most copyright licenses include a term, or a clause specifying possibilities for revocation. The GPL includes neither. Therefore, absent an implied term (one court found licenses with out specific terms to have an implied term of 35 years) the license can be revoked at any time. See here for more info, although this doesn't directly deal with the question. This is also where the number 35 comes from. http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap2.html#203 sam th --- sam uchicago edu --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/ OpenPGP Key: CABD33FC --- http://samth.dyndns.org/key DeCSS: http://samth.dynds.org/decss
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