Do you have any court cases to back this assertion? The GPL is the license of millions (maybe billions) of lines of code. We've all bet on them being non-reversible on released code.
Given the way Linux is copyrighted (with many holders), it'd be an absurd situation if any copyright holder could just decide, after the fact, that they don't want their code being distributed under that license anymore. In fact...I think that's been litigated in SCO vs. IBM. So...what are you basing your legal theory on here?
The closest case seems to be a Mattel court case involving their CyberPatrol software and a program by Eddy Jahnsson and Matthew Skala called cphack. It raised the issue of whether a GPL license could be withdrawn. However, the case was such that no definitive legal conclusion came about. (I was shocked to find that Googling directed me to something I wrote 10 years ago :-) https://www.cnet.com/news/revoking-open-source/)
However, the widespread assumption is certainly that it doesn't require a contributor license agreement to keep this whole open source thing from crashing down. Which it would if an arbitrary developer could threaten pulling out their code from some project N years later. In today's climate, it's pretty reasonable to assume that if no one has pulled that sort of blackmail, no one thinks it has legs.
> Given the way Linux is copyrighted (with many holders), it'd be an absurd situation if any copyright holder could just decide, after the fact, that they don't want their code being distributed under that license anymore.
Even leaving aside general issued on the revocability of licenses that aren't special to copyright law, the US has a special provision making all licenses and transfers of rights by authors under copyright revocable by written notice, during a 5 year window 35 years from when they occurred; see 17 USC Sec. 203.
> So...what are you basing your legal theory on here?
The general American (Anglo-American, I think, as I'm fairly certain the principle is a common law one which is older than the US) of licenses.
17 USC Sec. 203 also covers derivative works and the fact that they remain distributable under the original terms (though future derivative works are up in the air if your interpretation holds water, which I still don't really buy).
Further, revocation of copyright on works with multiple authors must be signed off on by a majority of copyright holders, per the law you've cited. That's literally impossible with something like Linux (but maybe not with something like Arduino, if it only has a tiny number of authors, I don't know).
If it's so simple and obvious, why has it never happened in 30+ years of GPL software, when billions of dollars are at stake?
"The general American (Anglo-American, I think, as I'm fairly certain the principle is a common law one which is older than the US) of licenses."
Many things in "common law" have been replaced by written legislation and case law. Modern copyright bears no resemblance, and only has only tenuous connections, to common law. Copyright is among the most debated and litigated categories of law in the modern world, with legislation, legal precedent, and even international treaties covering it. If your position is that it is as you say because common law is as you say, that just sounds really shaky. Now, I need to ask you to back up the assertion that "common law" is the law in force on copyright in any developed Western nation, because that seems to be the crux of your interpretation of the law.
I don't know, man. I'm not an expert, by any means, but I'm just not following your reasoning here, at all.
My understanding of the GPL is that it is a one way street for released code. New releases can be under a new license if all of the authors agree to it, but once something is out there under the GPL, it is always under the GPL. Nothing you've said makes me think otherwise because the weight of precedent seems to disagree with you.
the US has a special provision making all licenses and transfers of rights by authors under copyright revocable by written notice, during a 5 year window 35 years from when they occurred; see 17 USC Sec. 203.
Wow, that's rather incredible. It's enheartening to see a US copyright law that seems biased toward authors rather than publishers.
The provisions of section 203 safeguard[] authors against unremunerative transfers. A provision of this sort is needed because of the unequal bargaining position of authors, resulting in part from the impossibility of determining a work’s value until it has been exploited.
Given the way Linux is copyrighted (with many holders), it'd be an absurd situation if any copyright holder could just decide, after the fact, that they don't want their code being distributed under that license anymore. In fact...I think that's been litigated in SCO vs. IBM. So...what are you basing your legal theory on here?