Public Domain Python

Courageous jkraska1 at san.rr.com
Sat Oct 28 17:37:51 EDT 2000


> > :I disagree; once you have granted someone the right to create a derived
> > :work, and that derived work exists, ...

> > If that were the case, then a product could never have a license change -
> > but they change all the time....

> I think the generally accepted take on this is that essentially a license -
> unless it has a "this can be revoked at any time" type clause - applies in
> perpetuity to a specific version of a program. Later versions may have
> different licences but the old versions licenses still apply to those old
> versions.

Correct. And in a case like this, that has much more staying power than
you might think. While I haven't looked at the CNRI license in quite a
while, I understand it to mean "we grant you the right to create a
derived work and we further grant you the right to grant others to
create derived works from your derived work". If I don't misunderstand
the original grant, it cannot be retracted; at best, CNRI could have
new licenses for new versions. They won't be pulling anyone else's
derived works off the shelves.





C//



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