<div dir="auto">Can a license be terminated under section 203 (<a href="https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html">https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html</a>) after twenty five years?<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">A contributor can also make life difficult for users. After a spat with the Belgian government, the author of iText changed the license to the AGPL and started making threats against users of older versions.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 06:25 Kevin P. Fleming <<a href="mailto:kevin%2Bosi@km6g.us">kevin+osi@km6g.us</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>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.<br><br></div>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.<br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 5:49 AM Antoine Thomas <<a href="mailto:antoine.thomas@prestashop.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">antoine.thomas@prestashop.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Hello dear OSI members,<div><br></div><div>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)</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>A few articles:<br>- <a href="https://hackaday.com/2018/09/27/can-you-take-back-open-source-code/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://hackaday.com/2018/09/27/can-you-take-back-open-source-code/</a></div><div>- <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-if-you-try-to-take-your-code-out-of-linux/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-happens-if-you-try-to-take-your-code-out-of-linux/</a></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><br class="m_-7869506660020518851gmail-m_-3246184599375351388gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><div>Best regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Antoine<br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr" class="m_-7869506660020518851gmail-m_-3246184599375351388gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br style="color:rgb(111,123,138);font-family:Arial;font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(111,123,138);font-family:Arial;font-size:13px"><table style="border-spacing:0px;border-collapse:collapse;background-color:transparent;color:rgb(111,123,138);font-family:Arial;font-size:13px"><tbody><tr><td style="padding:0px" width="80"><a href="https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures" style="background-color:transparent;color:rgb(13,99,143);outline:currentcolor none 0px" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"><img src="http://img-cdn.prestashop.com/signatures/signature-logo.png" alt="PrestaShop" style="border:0px none;vertical-align:middle" width="68" height="85" border="0"></a></td><td style="padding:0px"><p style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Open Sans",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(52,57,67)"><span style="font-weight:700">Antoine Thomas aka ttoine</span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 4px;font-stretch:normal;font-size:12px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Open Sans",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(52,57,67)">Developer Advocate</p><p style="margin:0px 0px 4px;font-stretch:normal;font-size:12px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Open Sans",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(104,115,127)"><span style="display:inline-block">t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06</span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 7px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Open Sans",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(104,115,127)"><a href="mailto:antoine.thomas@prestashop.com" style="background-color:transparent;color:rgb(104,115,127);outline:currentcolor none 0px" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">antoine.thomas@prestashop.com</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="padding:0px;font-size:1px" height="10"><br></td></tr></tbody></table><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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