4 ms·

I'd assume they just go to his estate unless he specifically specified otherwise.

• JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I'd assume that his immediate descendants would respect his involvement in open source. Is there a risk (maybe in other cases) that inheritors of an estate can retrospectively change licenses on code for which they have inherited the copyright to? (Maybe I'm missing some understanding of software licenses though.)
  • lloydde 11y ago
    IANAL and this is not legal advice. There is no risk in any event as the work was published under specific copyright terms and conditions.
  • leoedin 11y ago
    Pretty much every free software license is irrevocable - if you make software available under that license, you can't retroactively remove those licensing terms later. This applies whether the copyright is owned by a person or corporation. It's a fundamental building block of the concept of free software - that once software becomes free, it cannot be made non-free again. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not sure whether this has been tested in court, so I'd suggest further research on your own. There's some discussiof this on Groklaw - http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2006062204552163 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2006062204552163