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Comment by dpq | Hacker News Reader

"Perpetual" has a precise meaning: it lasts until it is explicitly revoked; you don't have to re-license the IP on a regular basis, for example.

I.e. a temporary license will expire by default, but a perpetual one will not.

This is not legal advice but rather my personal understanding of the matter which may or may not be factually correct.

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Please send this new definition to the compilers of my legal dictionary. What you write is arguable for the license as a while, but in no way inheres to the word itself. Interestingly there is a common law 'rule against perpetuities' due to the legal headaches they create in wills and trusts. This would probably bias a US court somewhat against a broad interpretation of the license, but then again it might also bias it against the licensor whose carelessness gave rise to the litigation in the first place.

which dictionary are you sing?

This one clearly shows the ambiguous definition:

https://thelawdictionary.org/perpetual

> Never ceasing; continuous ; enduring; lasting; unlimited in respect of time; continuing without intermission or interval.

Black's law dictionary

> "Perpetual" has a precise meaning: it lasts until it is explicitly revoked

I guess this explains why the Terms of Service for some sites that host user generated content state that as a user you grant the company a perpetual, irrevocable license to use your content. Makes sense, thank you.

So the new license would apply to past work by others under the old OGL as well?

Trust some more work went into the gpl if that is true.

No, unless they licensed their work in a way that makes the new OGL the correct license (like the "GPLv2 or later" language some software projects chose).

WOTC only has the ability to change the license of IP they own, even retroactively. However, works based on WOTC IP which were legal under the OGLv1.0 may no longer be legal under the new terms, putting them in a legal gray area (they may be illegal to distribute, or they may still be legal to distribute but only because they were legal at the time they were created).

Creating new works based on the old IP that would have been legal under the OGLv1.0 would almost certainly not be legal if WOTC changes the license, though.

Note that section 9 of the OGL is an "or later" clause allowing Wizards to publish new authorized versions. (Wizards are now also claiming they can deauthorize versions which is much more wishful on their behalf)

Unless the original license includes a revocation or termination clause, it cannot be unilaterally revoked or terminated. The OGL does include a termination clause but it doesn't apply in this context

A license doesn't limit the rights of the licensor in any way that is not explicitly mentioned in the license text. So any license can be implicitly revoked if it doesn't explicitly say it is irrevocable (e.g. the GPL says exactly that, to avoid this kind of loophole).

The GPL v3 uses the word "irrevocable". The GPL v2 and earlier, and many other open source licenses, don't.

But that the authors of GPL v3 wanted to close this gotcha loophole that you and the forum lawyer calls attention to, doesn't mean the gotcha loophole would have worked. Nor that it's going to work, or even will continue working even if it's worked before.

Courts aren't computers just executing legal code - for good and bad.

Sure, nothing is certain related to legal matters. I was looking into this some more and there are apparently even arguments that even the GPLv3 is actually revokeable as long as all the copies were given away for free. Of course, others argue that even the BSD or MIT license are irrevocable.

There is little case law about software re-licensing at least, so yeah, it's hard to say.

Where in US statutory law or case law is there an implicit right to revoke a license unilaterally?

There is plenty of case law that says the opposite. For instance Cohen v. Paramount Picture shows that copyright licenses are not unilaterally revocable even if the original license doesn't explicitly state it is irrevocable.

A license is an enforceable contract. Revocation requires the consent of both parties, if no exception is provided for originally. Eisenberg, The Revocation of Offers covers many of the nuances of when a contract or even an offer is no longer revocable.

I don't speak legalese, but does the absence of a termination clause mean it cannot be terminated, or does the presence of a non-terminable clause mean it cannot be terminated?

That is, if it's not explicitly mentioned, which one applies?

There is a termination clause which lists the acceptable reason as being a failure to fix a breach of the license within 30 days of being notified of that breach.

The fact that there is no "we have a new version" clause listed in the termination section would likely go against wizards but they are likely to claim deauthorization is different to termination.

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