Re: Fwd: That whole "Linux stealing our code" thing

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

Chris Friesen writes:

> Daniel Hazelton wrote:
>> On Tuesday 04 September 2007 09:27:02 Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
>>
>>>Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@enter.net> writes:
>>>
>>>>US Copyright law. A copyright holder, regardless of what license he/she
>>>>may have released the work under, can still revoke the license for a
>>>>specific person or group of people. (There are some exceptions, but they
>>>>do not apply to the situation that is being discussed)
>
> The OpenBSD policy page doesn't agree with you:
>
> "...That means that having granted a permission, the copyright holder
> can not retroactively say that an individual or class of individuals
> are no longer granted those permissions. Likewise should the copyright
> holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissions already
> granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he may impose
> more restrictive permissions in his future distributions of that work."
>
> http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html

By my reading, this is supported by 17 USC 203(a)(3):

  (3) Termination of the grant may be effected at any time during a
      period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years
      from the date of execution of the grant; or, if the grant covers
      the right of publication of the work, the period begins at the
      end of thirty-five years from the date of publication of the
      work under the grant or at the end of forty years from the date
      of execution of the grant, whichever term ends earlier.

(from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000203----000-.html )

I would be interested to see what other legal basis is alleged as
grounds to rescind a license.

Michael