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MIT certainly doesn't say it can't be revoked. But do you really think it's inherently revocable at will, in all or even many practical circumstances? From the

MIT certainly doesn't say it can't be revoked. But do you really think it's inherently revocable at will, in all or even many practical circumstances? From the US law perspective, I understand that some courts have decided that non-exclusive licenses without stated terms can be revoked at any time. But I wonder about situations when a court looking at a permissive grant for open software wouldn't also bring contract and quasi-contract concepts to bear. There's clearly an expectation of reliance, MIT and BSD themselves contain contract-type disclaimers and exclusions, and what a licensor might get in return doesn't have to be money.

scj 3y ago
If I had to bet, I'd bet on it not being revocable. Betting a mere $20 on a case currently in court could be fun. But my time is worth a lot more than that. So if I'm thinking about starting a viable open source fork off this thing, I'm effectively betting a lot more. That kind of begs the question, who am I betting against? I'm suggesting on the other end is an entity that chose a licence that attempts to minimize competition. Please, re-read the last sentence as I can't stress it enough. What happens if that competition-adverse entity's business model is existentially threatened by my fork? Maybe they're willing to try their luck and try the MIT license in court. Whether or not I'd win doesn't matter to me. A long lawsuit is going to be expensive either way. The question I'd pose is if the case would be quickly dismissed? I'm not a lawyer, I have no way of answering that. But I've donated money to more than one programmer's legal fund against an absurd case that was clearly meant to just kill the project [0]. I don't want to be that programmer. I'd rather work on something else. Which gets to the actual point I've been trying to make all along. I personally wouldn't want to fork this, and I suspect a percentage of the open source community feels the same way. And forking is one of the most important aspects of open source. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/181261/ https://lwn.net/Articles/181261/ - The programmer actually emailed me back with a thank you note, expressing some surprise that a non-American would care about a legal system they were not subject to.

scj 3y ago

If I had to bet, I'd bet on it not being revocable. Betting a mere $20 on a case currently in court could be fun. But my time is worth a lot more than that. So if I'm thinking about starting a viable open source fork off this thing, I'm effectively betting a lot more. That kind of begs the question, who am I betting against? I'm suggesting on the other end is an entity that chose a licence that attempts to minimize competition. Please, re-read the last sentence as I can't stress it enough. What happens if that competition-adverse entity's business model is existentially threatened by my fork? Maybe they're willing to try their luck and try the MIT license in court. Whether or not I'd win doesn't matter to me. A long lawsuit is going to be expensive either way. The question I'd pose is if the case would be quickly dismissed? I'm not a lawyer, I have no way of answering that. But I've donated money to more than one programmer's legal fund against an absurd case that was clearly meant to just kill the project [0]. I don't want to be that programmer. I'd rather work on something else. Which gets to the actual point I've been trying to make all along. I personally wouldn't want to fork this, and I suspect a percentage of the open source community feels the same way. And forking is one of the most important aspects of open source. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/181261/ https://lwn.net/Articles/181261/ - The programmer actually emailed me back with a thank you note, expressing some surprise that a non-American would care about a legal system they were not subject to.