[michaelmrose]

I thought the problem with that argument was one part promissory estoppel and one part non-monetary consideration. EG you realized something under the GPL with expectation that said work would serve to for instance help you get a job later by demonstrating your work and users by submitting bug reports, code, endorsements helped you achieve the expected goals by making your work more visible and credible.

I'm not aware of any case in which for instance someone has successfully defended their right to rescind a license to the GPL license code they granted in history. A pragmatic court given 2 plausible interpretations with some merit isn't obligated to endorse an interpretation with an obviously negative effect they're people not CPUs interpreting code.

A timeline where we need a GPLv4 to cover the case of assholes taking back their shit contrary to decades of expectations and leaving mission critical v2 projects like Linux constantly at risk of a 10,000 time bombs from heirs taking back daddy's code is clearly the dumbest of all possible worlds and we are under no obligation to live there if their is a reasonable out.

My money is on this theory remaining a fairy tale until someone actually spends enough money to test it and its dissolved forever by actual case law.

Artifex Software, Inc. v. Hancom, Inc. which was ultimately settled out of court seems to have found the exact opposite of what you said if I read this correctly.

https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/breach-gpl-...

Jacobsen v. Katzer is a complicated affair but regardless of your interpretations it certainly doesn't concern the revocation of a bare license. Most of the action seems to concern whether the party could get damages.