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This seems to be accurate, except for #4. It does not make their license "illegitimate". It's true that he can terminate his right to use the contributions (p
by DannyBee 12y ago
This seems to be accurate, except for #4. It does not make their license "illegitimate".
It's true that he can terminate his right to use the contributions (particularly if no CLA was signed granting rights), contrary to their assertion that he can't because he knew what the licensing was.
He can also sue for copyright infringement in previous versions.
But that's it.
At least in the US, the only one who could sue for copyright infringement is a copyright holder. That means, in this case, the folks who own copyright to CraftBukkit. Right now that includes him. They could remove his contributions, but that would not put them in compliance for the versions already distributed, and they could be sued for those.
(For the curious, Breach of contract wise, third party beneficiary arguments around the GPL have repeatedly failed, AFAIK, so others trying to get source as beneficiaries have not succeeded).
- teraflop 12y agoYeah, to be clear, I'm not arguing the validity of these positions, and #4 is the part I'm most suspicious of.
- Danieru 12y agoJust to be clear, if they did remove his contributions they must also make so none of the left over code is a derivative work. That would be a task beyond even a security audit. Mojang is not in a very business friendly situation right now. The only 100% not-lawsuit-libel approach is to either open source minecraft or rewrite the entire thing. They are still open to lawsuits related to the existing distributions but the traditional settlement is a combination of stopping to infringe and medium cash payment.
- DannyBee 12y agoYes. This is why, when folks say "CLA's are not necessary, you'd just remove the code" (like bradley kuhn recently did), i think they are very very wrong :)