Change.org Petition against Wesley Wolfe

No permissions would be granted, as per the default terms of copyright. The exclusive right to distribute would belong to the contributer, and only for their portion. Everyone else would have no rights to distribute (similarly nor would contributers have any right to distribute portions they did not create). Any future permissions would have to be explicitly re-granted by the corresponding contributer who is free to pick whatever terms (they have this right already, they only cannot revoke the GPL's terms after the fact, but can distribute their work under any other set of terms they desire).

Criminal Intent is a bit different, and doesn't really apply to civil law (Copyright is civil law, though some sorts of infringement do become a criminal matter). At best I think you could attempt to make a case around Reliance-based estoppel. However, I think you could only argue that the promise you were acting under were the permissions of the GPL, and again would fall back to requiring adherence with the impossible terms.

 

Though wasn't the promise for the infringing code partly by the same contributor rather the LGPL (CraftBukkit), having that LGPL probably/now being invalidated by it implementing the GPL-API Bukkit? Not sure that makes a difference, but the projects (Bukkit + CraftBukkit) being actually one project lead by the same people, thus being closely tied, seems to be somewhat fishy to me. I'm no lawyer and your version seems sound, it still wouldn't change my general judgment of the situation, but could be interesting if this was filed to just kill it, or to save someone from other claims.

 

"This post has been edited 1 time. It was last edited by Jadedcat Sep 7, 2014."
May I ask... why?

 

ZanderMan9 New members, old members returning after a lengthy absence, or members who have been breaking rules have to have a number of posts approved before they show up on the forums. This approval shows up as an edit.