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Comment by 1MachineElf | Hacker News Reader

Using this logic, how might it play out for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? They are now requiring payment in exchange for access to the source code.

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Red Hat may start requiring CLAs for any source they accept as contribution to any software they maintain. To do otherwise would put them at risk of contributors rescinding their licenses and preventing Red Hat from distributing the software they make money on.

CLAs may become standard for all serious open source projects for similar reasons.

There's a reason why CLAs, including signed permission from your employer, have been standard for GNU Project contributions since forever ago, even if it weren't tied to this particular issue. It gives the FSF free and clear rights to the code to enforce copyleft without the potential for legal snags regarding ownership and permission to distribute later on down the line.

You still need to show that rescinding the license you granted for your open source code is even a thing. It would basically look to collapse a good portion of the software industry into an endless flurry of lawsuit from any number of contributors and their heirs looking to monetize blackmailing projects by threatening to take back contributions. Why wouldn't the US court system nope out of all that by any means available?

Yeah, I was also led to understand that if you've distributed version 1.00 of your code with a license, there's no rescinding that, you can only stop distributing the license for versions 1.01 onwards. People wouldn't be allowed to use your new versions, but they can stay on version 1.00 forever.

Maybe that's just the GPL due to how it's formulated.

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