Re: Revised Copyright: is this more palatable?

On Tue, 4 Jul 2000, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> 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?

To the best of *my* knowledge, a copyright cannot be retro-actively
imposed on software ... but, I'm not a copyright lawyer, so may be wrong
on this ...

I *believe* what Jan was getting at was that the copyright should be made
such that, as our example has gone so far, if his TOAST contribution falls
under said copyright, he can't, at some later date, decide to pull *his*
code out of the tree ... but, it only works "from that day forward", not
retro-actively on any previous code he's submitted ...