Frans, if you had said that the general thinking in the OSS community is that *GPL cannot be revoked, but you disagree (either in the general case or just for EU/Netherlands), that'd be OK. But you just said that it can be revoked any time, as if it was a simple and undisputed truth, and that's a) just not right and b) a dangerous thing to do, because opinions spread.
This is a very complicated discussion that sometimes has expert lawyers disagreeing, so IMHO there's no use in technicians like us providing their own interpretations of legal texts. I spent a lot of time reading *GPL licenses and secondary literature, and we use the advice of a lawyer who specializes in software and OSS licensing. Still, I do not give my personal opinion about how I think some words in the GPL would be interpreted in the context of any legal system. The only thing I can say is that there's agreement within the OSS community that revocation is not possible, and if Linux can live with that (I'm sure there are Dutch Linux contributors too), I'm quite confident that NH can live with it. BTW I never said you cannot stop distribution under a certain license, I explicitly said you can. The consensus is, however, that what has been distributed before would still be valid. Cheers, Stefan > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:nhibernate- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Frans Bouma > Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 12:39 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: [nhibernate-development] LGPL v3 for NH3 (?) > > > AAAAHHHHHHHH! > > > > Please Frans, it's nothing personal either, but you're obviously not > into > > *GPL licensing that deep. First the claims about the AGPL being viral > over > > web service boundaries, and now you tell people that any contributor > can > > just revoke their contribution from LGPL usage? Please be careful > with > such > > claims! > > errr, the contributor OWNS his work by law, and if the > contributor > (still copyright holder!) doesn't want to distribute his work anymore, > he's > entitled to do so. How can a GPL license overrule that law? It can't. I > simply don't understand why you think a copyright holder CANT revoke > distribution rights of the work he owns. > > About AGPL's clause over webservices, I indeed misinterpreted it, > you're right, I'm not. > > > Once you grant a license such as the GPL or LGPL, it cannot be > withdrawn. > > You can stop distributing it under that license, you can release new > > versions without that license (if you own all necessary rights), but > you > > cannot prevent other people from using the previously released code > based > > upon the license it was released under. > > It's debatable, as it depends on what you see as 'ownership > right': > if I give you the right to use a piece of code I wrote, and after a > year I > decide to revoke it, do I have that right or not? Only if you received > from > me the right that you may use it indefinitely. For example dutch > copyright > law is written to protect the copyright holder, nothing can be done to > the > changed work without the approval of the copyright holder, this is a > difference between e.g. dutch law and US law and was also a problem > with > translating the creative commons to a dutch law compatible version. > > \o/ It depends! (where you are ;)) > > > At least that's what the FSF says. GPLv2 does not have the word > irrevocable > > in it, GPLv3 does. It has never been tested in court AFAIK, but the > way > you > > put it, it looks just uninformed to me. > > I'm not uninformed, trust me. I don't think you're uninformed > either, ISV's have to be well informed about what licensing is all > about and > what the consequences are, for example when someone does work for you > or > wants to contribute code to your project. > > > Thousands of OSS projects would be in danger if that was true, > including > > Linux. I really don't think that this is a possibility that should be > > considered by the NH team! > > look at the (c) of the sourcecode. :) You quoted a header of > Hibernate, the copyright is with RH, owner of JBoss. This isn't done > because > they like to own stuff, but because of that they want to be able to > decide > what happens to the code. > > What I suggested, an NH foundation which owns the (c), you don't > have the problems arising from 'owner controls what can be done', the > NH > foundation is in that case the owner. > > > BTW, we're not safe from patents in the EU: > > http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/05/german-high-court-declares- > all- > > software.html > > yeah, true. Though EU patent law overrules a german judge (if I'm > told correctly!), although it's a troubling progression. Software > patents > will hurt us all bigtime. > > FB
