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by eliah-lakhin
1832 days ago
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Talking about this specific case. I might be wrong here, but as far as I understand if the license does not state that it is non-revocable(which MIT doesn't explicitly state), it means that it could be revoked by the copyright owner. So, basically the owner can just revoke MIT license, and then replace it with something different. > that they've given away certain rights via their license agreement The license agreement normally should outline a procedure of revocation and termination of the license for applicants. And it should be a part of the agreement. This is pretty much normal practice in many proprietary licenses. And, in my opinion, is certainly morally fair considering that software distributed free of charge by the author. |
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A similar case was raised with regards to the Artistic License in Jacobsen v. Katzer [1]. In that case, the US Federal Circuit held that the license could only be revoked unilaterally if nothing of value had been exchanged between the parties. The open source software was held to be something of value, and thus the license was held to be irrevocable without consent of both parties.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this ruling would apply equally to other licenses that don't have an explicit revocation clause, like the MIT license.
The license agreement normally should outline a procedure of revocation and termination of the license for applicants. And it should be a part of the agreement. This is pretty much normal practice in many proprietary licenses.
Yes, that is one of the ways that proprietary licenses distinguish themselves from free software licenses. However, in this case, it seems like the author of the package wanted to have the benefits of a free software license (i.e. lots of people will use their software) without the downsides (i.e. people might use my software in ways that they don't like and don't agree with).
[1]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=177761825741712...