Re: Revised Copyright: is this more palatable?

On Tue, Jul 04, 2000 at 05:51:14PM +0200, Jan Wieck wrote:

>     The  new  license  should clearly make it impossible to later
>     pull out things again.

I'm confused about this.  I'm not a coder, so I beg forgiveness for my
intrusion, but how would it be possible to revoke the license on code once
contributed?

If I distribute something under terms t(1), and then later distribute the
same thing under terms t(2), even if terms t(2) revoke terms t(1), I can't
go back and get the original distribution back.

Now, in the case of something easily distributed (like code), if terms t(1)
allow free distribution, then all one needs is to argue that one is copying
that original distribution.  Am I missing something?

Because of the above, it seems to me that once some copyrighted work has
been opened, it can't be closed again.  Future developments by the original
copyright owner can, of course, include the original copyrightedwork under
different terms.  But even the original copyright owner can't go back and
change the license forsomething in the past, no?

--
Andrew Sullivan                                      Computer Services
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