From: Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@enter.net>
To: Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>
Subject: Re: Fwd: That whole "Linux stealing our code" thing
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 19:08:04 -0400
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Cc: "Chris Friesen" <cfriesen@nortel.com>, Krzysztof Halasa <khc@pm.waw.pl>,
       davids@webmaster.com,
       "Linux-Kernel@Vger. Kernel. Org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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On Tuesday 04 September 2007 15:44:31 Michael Poole wrote:
> Chris Friesen writes:
> > Daniel Hazelton wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 04 September 2007 09:27:02 Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
> >>>Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@enter.net> writes:
> >>>>US Copyright law. A copyright holder, regardless of what license he/she
> >>>>may have released the work under, can still revoke the license for a
> >>>>specific person or group of people. (There are some exceptions, but
> >>>> they do not apply to the situation that is being discussed)
> >
> > The OpenBSD policy page doesn't agree with you:
> >
> > "...That means that having granted a permission, the copyright holder
> > can not retroactively say that an individual or class of individuals
> > are no longer granted those permissions. Likewise should the copyright
> > holder decide to "go commercial" he can not revoke permissions already
> > granted for the use of the work as distributed, though he may impose
> > more restrictive permissions in his future distributions of that work."
> >
> > http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html
>
> By my reading, this is supported by 17 USC 203(a)(3):
>
>   (3) Termination of the grant may be effected at any time during a
>       period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years
>       from the date of execution of the grant; or, if the grant covers
>       the right of publication of the work, the period begins at the
>       end of thirty-five years from the date of publication of the
>       work under the grant or at the end of forty years from the date
>       of execution of the grant, whichever term ends earlier.
>
> (from
> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000203----000-
>.html )

Ah, I am both right and wrong, it seems. Apparently you have to wait anywhere 
form 35 to 40 years, and then you only have a five year window. Seems damned 
strange to me, but oh well.

(I'd totally forgotten that part of the law - or my mind decided to play 
tricks on me.)

DRH

PS: See, I will admit it when I'm shown evidence that I'm wrong :)

-- 
Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful.
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