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The Non-Revocable GPL

By Pamela Jones et al.

I know by now you've seen the notice by the guy claiming to "revoke" the GPL license on his code, because I'm getting email about it.

Here's the answer to your question:

No. One can't retroactively revoke licenses previously granted, unless the license terms allow you to do so.
The most you can do is stop granting new licenses.

Yes, I verified this with an attorney. Here's the GPL v2. See any terms allowing you to revoke? Me neither. You can find a lot of resources to help you understand the GPL on Groklaw's permanent GPL resources page. I'm doing my part, and I hope the guy does his by studying it.

If you change your mind and don't want to use the GPL any more, you can stop and use something else on new code going forward, and you can dual license your own code, but you can't redo the past and pull back GPL'd code. That's one of the beauties of the GPL, actually, that even if some individual gets a bug up his nose, or dies and his copyright is inherited by his wife who doesn't care about the GPL and wants to take it proprietary, or just to imagine for a moment, a Megacorp were to buy off a GPL programmer and get him to pretend to revoke the GPL with threats, and even if it were to initiate a SCO-like bogo-lawsuit (based perhaps on a theory under Copyright Law § 203, termination of rights -- lordy do we have to endure a living demo in some courtroom somewhere of every antiGPL theory found on every message board before they give up?), it doesn't matter ultimately, I don't think, as to what you can and can't do with the GPL. The GPL is what it is. Please don't use it if you don't like the terms.

By the way, it just got a little harder to change a license in a standards context, if there is public harm.

Full post as published by Groklaw on January 26, 2008 (boomark / email).