4 ms·

Eh, no. A software licence is a set of 'conditions for use' which you apply to code you have written and/or to which you have copyright. Unless you as a copyri

Eh, no. A software licence is a set of 'conditions for use' which you apply to code you have written and/or to which you have copyright. Unless you as a copyright owner explicitly allow use under other licenses/conditions, then that's it. This is basic copyright law, it doesn't matter if it's GPL or BSD etc.

tzs 12y ago
(I'm going by US law here, which may not necessarily be applicable in this case although if someone is issuing DMCA takedown requests then presumably at least some of this is under US law). A non-exclusive copyright license in the US does not need to be explicit or be written. It can be implied. One court noted, "An implied license can be found where the copyright holder engages in conduct from which the other party may properly infer that the owner consents to his use" [1]. I'd say that a copyright holder submitting his code to a project for inclusion in the project allows the project to properly infer that the copyright owner consents to the project using his code, and so supports an implied non-exclusive license to use the code. That implied license would be revocable, so if the author changes his mind he can tell the project to stop using the code, but would almost surely not be able to sue for damages over the past use. (Major exception: if the copyright holder was paid for the contribution, that might make the license irrevocable). Implied non-exclusive licenses are limited in scope, but as far as I have been able to tell there is no good objective way to tell what the scope is. If I post a comment on a forum (let's assume nothing in the TOS that I purportedly agreed to said anything about copyright), it is generally believed that I am granting them in implied non-exclusive license to display my content on the forum, and giving an implied non-exclusive license to other forum posters to quote my post in theirs without limit. But what if the forum wants to publish a "best of" book and include my post? Does the implied non-exclusive license cover that? In "Goldstein on Copyright" (one of the top two references on US Copyright law--the other being Nimmer), he says of the various cases on implied licenses and their scope, "The fact patterns of these cases suggest a close connection between implied copyright licenses and the doctrines of laches and estoppel", so I think I was on the right track suspecting that estoppel could play a role. Unfortunately, for more info that cite a section in the book that was not covered in the Google Books preview I was reading, and much as I would like owning a copy of Goldstein, it is way over my law book budget (it's almost $1000...about 1/3 the price of Nimmer). [1] Field v. Google Inc., 412 F. Supp. 2d 1106, 1115-16 (D. Nev. 2006)
- tedks 12y ago
  Who would the author be granting a license to? The project had no legal entity at the time of his contributions and the fact that some of the developers were later hired by Mojang doesn't imply that Mojang can arbitrarily re-license the original author's code. Further, the actual license that the original author used was the GPL. I think it'd be very difficult to say that there was an "implied license" that was somehow not the GPL.

tzs 12y ago

(I'm going by US law here, which may not necessarily be applicable in this case although if someone is issuing DMCA takedown requests then presumably at least some of this is under US law). A non-exclusive copyright license in the US does not need to be explicit or be written. It can be implied. One court noted, "An implied license can be found where the copyright holder engages in conduct from which the other party may properly infer that the owner consents to his use" [1]. I'd say that a copyright holder submitting his code to a project for inclusion in the project allows the project to properly infer that the copyright owner consents to the project using his code, and so supports an implied non-exclusive license to use the code. That implied license would be revocable, so if the author changes his mind he can tell the project to stop using the code, but would almost surely not be able to sue for damages over the past use. (Major exception: if the copyright holder was paid for the contribution, that might make the license irrevocable). Implied non-exclusive licenses are limited in scope, but as far as I have been able to tell there is no good objective way to tell what the scope is. If I post a comment on a forum (let's assume nothing in the TOS that I purportedly agreed to said anything about copyright), it is generally believed that I am granting them in implied non-exclusive license to display my content on the forum, and giving an implied non-exclusive license to other forum posters to quote my post in theirs without limit. But what if the forum wants to publish a "best of" book and include my post? Does the implied non-exclusive license cover that? In "Goldstein on Copyright" (one of the top two references on US Copyright law--the other being Nimmer), he says of the various cases on implied licenses and their scope, "The fact patterns of these cases suggest a close connection between implied copyright licenses and the doctrines of laches and estoppel", so I think I was on the right track suspecting that estoppel could play a role. Unfortunately, for more info that cite a section in the book that was not covered in the Google Books preview I was reading, and much as I would like owning a copy of Goldstein, it is way over my law book budget (it's almost $1000...about 1/3 the price of Nimmer). [1] Field v. Google Inc., 412 F. Supp. 2d 1106, 1115-16 (D. Nev. 2006)

tedks 12y ago
Who would the author be granting a license to? The project had no legal entity at the time of his contributions and the fact that some of the developers were later hired by Mojang doesn't imply that Mojang can arbitrarily re-license the original author's code. Further, the actual license that the original author used was the GPL. I think it'd be very difficult to say that there was an "implied license" that was somehow not the GPL.