3 ms·

> The FOSS license thereby becomes unavailable No, that's not how it works. If libfoo 2.0 was released under an open source license, it remains so into the fut

by jjav 4y ago

> The FOSS license thereby becomes unavailable No, that's not how it works. If libfoo 2.0 was released under an open source license, it remains so into the future. If a company was the owner of that source code and decides the libfoo 2.1 is now suddenly proprietary and no longer open source they can certainly do that. But libfoo 2.0 remains open source and can be forked by the community or whoever wants. There are many examples of this, for example Open Solaris. When Oracle bought Sun they quickly reverted Solaris back to closed source. But not even the (arguably) most lawyered-up tech company in the world can change history and change the license on the the previous Open Solaris releases. That's how Solaris forked into the proprietary Solaris which Oracle still keeps alive and the open source descendants of Open Solaris (Illumos, etc.)

kazinator 4y ago
> If libfoo 2.0 was released under an open source license, it remains so into the future. I would trust that only if the copyright holder makes it clear that they are not revoking the license for libfoo 2.0, but that libfoo 2.0.1 will be under a different license. If they indicate that they wish to revoke the license for previously released libfoo 2.0, it seems they have the right to do that; I don't want to be the one testing it in court. I don't know about the details of the Solaris/Oracle situation, but I doubt it hinged around it simply not being possible to revert a license, as such.
- jjav 4y ago
  I probably can't convince you (that's fine), but no, a company can't rewrite history just because they want to. A company as aggressively litigious as Oracle would love nothing more than to kill off all Open Solaris forks. But Sun released Open Solaris with an open source license so it's not something they can change. Consult a lawyer whenever you need to use an open source project, their opinion carries weight that mine does not.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    You're not going to convince anyone with that Oracle Solaris example mainly because there is likely a reason they couldn't retract the license: tons of code in there for which they are not the sole copyright holders. At best they could take back the 100% Oracle-owned parts. The community would have to build to fill in the gaps. They couldn't revoke any files that have, say, a BSD license, even if Oracle (or Sun, before them) had modified them and added their own copyright notice, simply because they would need to contact the original authors and act in concert with them; those authors would likely refuse. I'm mainly talking about situations when the revoking party is actually 100% copyright holder to the majority of the files implementing the payload functionality, without which there is no software. I don't see how you the copyright holder would not have the right to revoke a FOSS license over it. Based on what? None of the existing licensees have a signed contract of any kind, nor has any exchange of value taken place; allowing free redistribution and use was an uncompensated, unilateral action. Even if there were a doctrine that existing redistributors were grandfathered forever, so they could continue making copies and giving it away, the license would not actually be available to the recipients, who are not existing licensees. The U.S. Copyright Act indeed has the concept of termination: https://cdas.com/copyright-termination-prime/ https://cdas.com/copyright-termination-prime/ There are limitations to it for various obvious reasons, like that you can't terminate the copyright assignment implicit in a work for hire. (Because, doh, you were paid.)
    - jjav 4y ago
      > tons of code in there for which they are not the sole copyright holders No, that's not the case. By buying Sun, Oracle owns all the Open Solaris code. Sun of course could not have open sourced code they didn't own the rights to open source in the first place. It was a long effort within Sun to scrub all the code to make sure. (This is why open sourcing proprietary code is a lot of work and most companies don't bother. Thankfully Sun did.) Some parts had to be distributed as binary blobs because Sun didn't have the ownership (over time there were separate efforts to rewrite these to reduce dependency on binary blobs). > I don't see how you the copyright holder would not have the right to revoke a FOSS license over it. Can you provide any examples where this has happened?
      - 4y ago

by jjav 4y ago

kazinator 4y ago

> If libfoo 2.0 was released under an open source license, it remains so into the future. I would trust that only if the copyright holder makes it clear that they are not revoking the license for libfoo 2.0, but that libfoo 2.0.1 will be under a different license. If they indicate that they wish to revoke the license for previously released libfoo 2.0, it seems they have the right to do that; I don't want to be the one testing it in court. I don't know about the details of the Solaris/Oracle situation, but I doubt it hinged around it simply not being possible to revert a license, as such.

jjav 4y ago
I probably can't convince you (that's fine), but no, a company can't rewrite history just because they want to. A company as aggressively litigious as Oracle would love nothing more than to kill off all Open Solaris forks. But Sun released Open Solaris with an open source license so it's not something they can change. Consult a lawyer whenever you need to use an open source project, their opinion carries weight that mine does not.
- kazinator 4y ago
  You're not going to convince anyone with that Oracle Solaris example mainly because there is likely a reason they couldn't retract the license: tons of code in there for which they are not the sole copyright holders. At best they could take back the 100% Oracle-owned parts. The community would have to build to fill in the gaps. They couldn't revoke any files that have, say, a BSD license, even if Oracle (or Sun, before them) had modified them and added their own copyright notice, simply because they would need to contact the original authors and act in concert with them; those authors would likely refuse. I'm mainly talking about situations when the revoking party is actually 100% copyright holder to the majority of the files implementing the payload functionality, without which there is no software. I don't see how you the copyright holder would not have the right to revoke a FOSS license over it. Based on what? None of the existing licensees have a signed contract of any kind, nor has any exchange of value taken place; allowing free redistribution and use was an uncompensated, unilateral action. Even if there were a doctrine that existing redistributors were grandfathered forever, so they could continue making copies and giving it away, the license would not actually be available to the recipients, who are not existing licensees. The U.S. Copyright Act indeed has the concept of termination: https://cdas.com/copyright-termination-prime/ https://cdas.com/copyright-termination-prime/ There are limitations to it for various obvious reasons, like that you can't terminate the copyright assignment implicit in a work for hire. (Because, doh, you were paid.)
  - jjav 4y ago
    > tons of code in there for which they are not the sole copyright holders No, that's not the case. By buying Sun, Oracle owns all the Open Solaris code. Sun of course could not have open sourced code they didn't own the rights to open source in the first place. It was a long effort within Sun to scrub all the code to make sure. (This is why open sourcing proprietary code is a lot of work and most companies don't bother. Thankfully Sun did.) Some parts had to be distributed as binary blobs because Sun didn't have the ownership (over time there were separate efforts to rewrite these to reduce dependency on binary blobs). > I don't see how you the copyright holder would not have the right to revoke a FOSS license over it. Can you provide any examples where this has happened?
    - 4y ago