3 ms·

Nintendo can somehow retract the open source license that was previously issued? That doesn't make sense to me.

• dragonwriter 3y ago
  AIUI, gratuitous licenses are revocable at will in general in US law (if the standards for a contract rather than gratuitous license exist, things are different); the effect of revocation of a gratuitous license on parties that have expended resources in reliance on a promise of non-revocation may be limited by the doctrine of promissory estoppel, but even where such a limitation is found appropriate, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the revocation will have no effect and unlimited future use will be allowed.
  • nextaccountic 3y ago
    It's central to open source that licenses can't be revoked - if they could, then accepting contributions from external developers would be a hazard (they could withdraw their contributions and then you would need to get rid of their code)
    • DANmode 3y ago
      But what about the case of single-entity repos?
      • xattt 3y ago
        I feel like Nintendo would own the source from a particular snapshot, kind of like how certain projects close their code.
    • dragonwriter 3y ago
      > It’s central to open source that licenses can’t be revoked That…doesn’t change the underlying law. > if they could, then accepting contributions from external developers would be a hazard Accepting code from external developers under a gratuitous license is a hazard (given promissory estoppel, probably a fairly limited one, but still something of a hazard); that is one of the reasons that some projects, even if they offer code in a way which is likely a gratuitous license, require individual license contracts before incorporating third-party code. (Of course, there is still a hazard – the third party offering code might misrepresent their ownership of it, or despite copyright ownership might have violated a software patent, or… mitigating all hazards isn’t possible and individual projects decide their own risk tolerance.)
      • nextaccountic 3y ago
        > gratuitous license What does this mean? Also.. do you have any references?
        • cassianoleal 3y ago
          > What does this mean? I'm wondering the same. Perhaps something got lost in a double-translation? i.e. free -> <something in another language> -> gratuitous
          • dllthomas 3y ago
            IIUC it means a license that's granted without the consideration that would usually be required for a contract. I think that's approximately what'd be meant by a "free license" in ordinary English, with no extra connection to "Free Software". The references I'm finding are about physical property, though.
        • dragonwriter 3y ago
          > What does this mean? A license that is not part of a contract (usually, because of the absence of mutual consideration.)
    • MiguelX413 3y ago
      That's exactly what is precedented, that is to say, exactly that has happened many times in history already.
      • nextaccountic 3y ago
        Do you have a link? Any reference? There are billion dollar business whose existence would be threatened if someone did this..
        • MiguelX413 3y ago
          I remember it happened with Bukkit once but I don't know a good search engine with which I could actually search for a link.