Re: Fwd: figlet license change from Artistic to Clarified Artistic or Artistic 2.0?

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Glenn Maynard scripsit:

> He was given permission to do so, and nothing in that permission
> included a condition that the permission may be revoked at will.

The whole definition of "bare license" means a license that is unsupported
by consideration (i.e. not a contract):

	A bare license must be executed by the party to whom it is given
	in person, and cannot be made over or assigned by him to another;
	and, being without consideration, may be revoked at pleasure,
	as long as it remains executory; 39 Hen. VI. M. 12, page 7;
	but when carried into effect, either partially or altogether,
	it can only be rescinded, if in its nature it will admit of
	revocation, by placing the other side in the same situation
	in which he stood before he entered on its execution. 8 East,
	R. 308; Palm. 71; S. C. Poph. 151; S. C. 2 Roll. Rep. 143, 152.

		--Bouvier (an 1856 public-domain law dictionary)

Note that the first citation is to a case decided in 1461, which puts it
comfortably in the root of all common-law jurisdictions, unless explicitly
overruled by statute (which is unlikely).

> Well, I found one bit in statute that seems to be what you're referring
> to.  Section 203(c) [1] appears to give a five year window, starting 35
> years after the grant of a license, during which authors can revoke licenses.

[snip]

> Unless somebody finds something that renders this irrelevant to free
> software in the next few days, I'll poke licensing@gnu.org with this.

The FSF is well familiar with this.  It's one of the many reasons (or excuses)
why Daniel Bernstein refuses to release his software under a free license,
since he says that free licenses claim to grant more rights than are actually
grantable.  (BTW, Bernstein also grants a bare license to copy his almost
unmodifiable files, and denies that it is within his power to revoke them,
though with no argument why.)

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