Yes it is revocable by the copyright holders.. The groklaw article is wrong and was published by a ParaLegal (I am a lawyer for comparison) who was confused bec

Yes it is revocable by the copyright holders.. The groklaw article is wrong and was published by a ParaLegal (I am a lawyer for comparison) who was confused because she read a guide regarding commercial copyright licensing contracts. The copyleft article is wrong and was "updated" only when I raised the issue. I refuted it 5 hours after publication. A gratuitous (free) license, not coupled with an interest (you didn't pay for it), is revocable by the owner. That is the rule. You can cite random interested websites all you want, or you can take it from a lawyer. You will notice their "strategy" is to simply throw themselves on the mercy of the court and beg them not to enforce the owners legal rights. Quick rundown: Section 4 of the GPLv2 states "parties who have received..." The "you" here is the licensee, it is not the grantor (See Section 0 of the GPLv2 "Each licensee is addressed as "you". "). It is not applicable against the grantor of the license: it is a rule the licensee has to abide by, set by the grantor, in-order to have permission to modify or create derivative works at all. About the printer driver case: The contract in that case is the preliminary writing, the offer to do business ("pay us, or alternatively follow the GPL"). The acceptance of that contract by following the terms of that preliminary writing (choosing the GPL instead of paying). That is why both contract and damages under copyright are available. Damages for the contract portion ("pay us"), or damages for violating the GPL license. The parties later settled out of court. The key is that the businesses offer created two alternative means of acceptance of it's offer to do business: pay for the commercial license, or follow the GPL. So the court allowed the biz to recover the lost profit.