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by drcube 5176 days ago
What's with the "inventor gets to change his mind" clause? That's like having a clause in the GPL that says at any given time, the author can revoke the GPL and sell the copyright to Microsoft. It appears like they're not taking this seriously.
3 comments
phillmv 5176 days ago
I interpreted it as a concession to moral rights - we can't initiate a lawsuit without your consent, sort of idea.

More broadly, they're hedging their bits by trying to preserve some financial value to their patent portfolio.

Suppose you patent "swipe left to refresh" and five years later the private equity group that has bought the husk of your former company approaches you and offers you 10 grand for the right to litigate aggressively… I would find it hard to say no, despite thinking all software patents are bunk.

In the end, it's converting the yc pledge into legally binding language, and without limiting it to just startups. Like the pledge, it's rather toothless – but a step in the right direction.

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wickedchicken 5176 days ago
> That's like having a clause in the GPL that says at any given time, the author can revoke the GPL and sell the copyright to Microsoft.

Which, unless the author has specifically assigned copyright to someone else, you can totally do. A similar situation arises with dual-licensed software. Of course, older versions of the software still 'live on' under the GPL, the author is implicitly making a fork.

This is one of the reasons the FSF wants you to assign it copyright to stuff: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AssignCopyright

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drcube 5176 days ago
>Of course, older versions of the software still 'live on' under the GPL, the author is implicitly making a fork.

That's what I'm talking about, though. You can't say "Everybody that has previously used or is currently using this software under the terms of the GPL now owes me a crapload of money -- and by the way, the GPL is revoked and you must abide by the Microsoft EULA".

But that seems, to my untrained eye, to be exactly what this Twitter patent promotes. It's basically saying "We won't sue you now, but we reserve the right to do so at any time in the future. So keep your grubby mitts off our IP." Really, it's no different than the status quo.

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PotatoEngineer 5175 days ago
No, the point is that all of the current & older versions of software would still be GPL. Only the author's next release (possibly released today) would be under different licensing terms. You can't revoke the GPL.
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dalore 5176 days ago
An author of a GPL licenses work does own the copyright and is free to sell the copyright to anyone he chooses and even change the license. What they can't do is to revoke the GPL of past versions that are out.

For instance you can dual license your work. Have a GPL version for free or a private version which they could pay for.

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