On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Benson Margulies <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote: > There's no such thing as a 'retroactive license change', though > perhaps the Tanuki-person has managed a sufficient approximation. Is > there?
IMO enough of a sufficient approximation to worry :-/ (more detail in line) > Once upon a time, he/they released some version of JSW under a > friendly licence, and it pushed to central. AFAICT The compressed artifact lacks substantial license information. The license meta-data indicates that the artifact is licensed under the "Tanuki Software license". This is not a license but a reference to a web page where a license might be obtained from "Tanuki Software". AIUI this trick means that maven central does not have a license but people can obtain a license by visiting that page. > The grant of that license > to that version is effectively irrevocable. Subsequent versions may > have different licenses, and the author might have removed the old > version -- though if it was really licensed with a permissive license > some other person could put it back. AIUI a rights holder could just stop issuing public licenses for an artifact at any time, and require new licensees agree new terms. Anyone who previously obtained a public license from "Tanuki Software" could publish the artifact under the old public license. Issuing a public license directly to maven central would therefore protect everyone downstream. This doesn't seem to have happened in this case :-/ (FWIW I doubt "Tanuki Software" would act against maven central under US copyright law. I'm more worried about liability for maven users in places (like England) with different copyright laws where justice is pay-to-play.) Robert --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org
