>>2692>This sparked a legal debate about whether revoking your code is allowed. Note that copyright and license are two separate things. Conflating them is what usually prevents people from penetrating the topic.Your missing a topic: contract law.
One needs to know all three to come to a conclusion.
Most programmers are familiar with none of them.
A non-exclusive copyright license cannot be held to be a transfer of rights, so this knocks out one counter-argument.
A license is not by-itself a license-contract. The license is the thing you are trying to "gain". This is another thing programmers are confused about: some think they are "giving" "code" when they are granting a license to use that code instead.
A contract, which promises a license as payment, can be functionally irrevocable outside of the terms of the contract when it comes to consumer licensing contracts.
Where this intersects with the "GPL Debate":
When someone puts their work "out there" under the "GPL" they are:
Granting a non-exclusive license.
What they are not doing is:
creating a contract with a third party.
transferring rights.
Thus, like any such license to use property (real, personal, etc etc), where there is no contract, and which cannot be construed as a transfer: the license can be terminated at any time by the grantor.
