[License-discuss] Can a contributor take back open source code ?

[Kevin P. Fleming]

If the contributions were legitimately provided under an OSI-approved (or
similar) license, the license cannot be terminated for convenience. As a
result, anyone who received the code under that license can continue to
exercise all of the rights granted by the license (distribution,
modification, etc.) as long as they wish to do so.

Of course the contributor can request that the project remove their
contributions, and the project can choose to do so, but there is no path
which would force the project to do so.

On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 5:49 AM Antoine Thomas <
antoine.thomas at prestashop.com> wrote:

> Hello dear OSI members,
>
> I have a "not easy" question: is it possible for a contributor to remove
> his contributions (code, translations, ...) from an open source project?
> And, if someone do that, is it possible for the project to continue to
> maintain the previous version, thanks to the license? (I mean, before the
> deletion)
>
> What copyright tells about this kind of situation? Are there some
> experience already? While it is easy to find blog articles, there is no
> clear statement on OSI and FSF websites on this touchy topic.
>
> A few articles:
> - https://hackaday.com/2018/09/27/can-you-take-back-open-source-code/
> -
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-if-you-try-to-take-your-code-out-of-linux/
>
> It seems that it's not really possible, but I would like to be sure. Could
> someone help me? In our case at PrestaShop, the project is distributed in
> OSL. I am currently reading it again to check if there is a part about this
> topic.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Antoine
>
>
> [image: PrestaShop]
> <https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures>
>
> Antoine Thomas aka ttoine
>
> Developer Advocate
>
> t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06
>
> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com
>
>
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