Comment by btdmaster
4 years ago
Can you revoke an Apache-2.0 copyright license? The terms say irrevocable, though it stipulates respecting the terms and conditions:
"2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form."
Apache also doesn’t require you to share source code. Just because a company publishes their code under an OSS license doesn’t automatically make them the good guys and unless there’s some critical context it seems like pure FUD.
Afaik Apache only requires you to maintain the copyright when distributing in source form (ie you don’t need to mention the license in binary form) but I’m not a lawyer and maybe misread. The license is certainly irrevocable and patent indemnifying provided you don’t violate it.
You can’t both try to engender good will by releasing your code as OSS and then simultaneously going after someone who would seem to be complying with the terms with FUD. To see the FUD most clearly:
> and we believe they may also be in violation of the GNU AGPL v3 versions of MinIO
If that were the case you’d actually be in a court of law enforcing the license rather than trying to sway any kind of public opinion.
This almost certainly stems from their switch to AGPLv3 to ensure that cloud providers can’t use it as part of their own offering. That’s fair but also provides context on motivation.
> The license is certainly irrevocable and patent indemnifying provided you don’t violate it.
That's essentially what I find contentious, is whether "subject to the terms and conditions of this license" it is irrevocable or it is irrevocable irrespective of whether the terms of the license are being violated. With its phrasing I assumed it's the latter.
Actually, I think you're right. It's even worse. I'm not a lawyer but it seems like Apache2 grants a permanent license and the ONLY exception is when you're bringing patent litigation. The "not a lawyer" piece comes in what the consequence is if you break a license but I suspect you're no longer protected. A fake cease & desist is all MinIO could muster here.