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Re: Always free?



On Thursday 06 February 2003 23:55, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> Mark Rafn wrote:
> > It [Perl's copyright holders] can't retroactively change licenses.
> > There will always be a free Perl.
>
> It is my understanding that licensees (generally) haven't been given any
> consideration in exchange for the software, so a license can be revoked by
> the licensor at any time.  I, for example, never paid anyone for the
> license to my copy of Perl.  So my rights under that license can be revoked
> if the copyright holder wants to change the license conditions or revoke
> the license and there's nothing I can do about that.
>

I do not believe this is the case.

If I grab a random piece of GPL software today and start hacking and tomorrow 
the author changes the license the copy I have does not change.  This is what 
allows projects to fork.

The author can not take away ant rights that were granted.  Of course this is 
my interpretation of comments made here and elsewhere.  Anyone else care to 
weigh in?



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