I believe you are making the mistake that the license on code has
anything to do with what the author chooses to do in the future.
Releasing something as BSD does not force the author to do anything in
the future with his code, and he/she could add and relicence as he/she
feels fit. HOWEVER, that particular code has already been released as
BSD, and the author no longer has control over that release.
I believe you are confusing the fact that an author can decide to
release code under another license, with the existence of code under
that earlier license. The license grant comes from THE CODE (which
bears a license), not THE AUTHOR. I can use GPL code I get in the mail
because the license on the work says I can do so, not because I
contacted the author and got a specific grant. If such a grant were
only verbal, your theory might hold, but that doesn't apply to any OSS
software under discussion here.
If your legal theory were true, I could sell you a book and then later
demand that you destroy it. I could also release something as public
domain, and then later rescind that (I still hold the copyright on what
I produced), and charge money from anyone who used it. I think its safe
to say that this does not happen in practice. Please provide some
examples to the contrary or caselaw if you want to convince me otherwise.
Furthermore, BSD/GPL software could not really exist under your legal
theory; A programmer who wrote 30 year old core BSD code could wake up
tomorrow and decide to require all BSD derivatives to remove his code or
pay him for it (and the next day he could change the price again). Open
source software would not exist if such a liability were true, and
companies like Sun could not be built up off of derivatives of it.
Linux 0.01 is still available under a pre-GPL license if you can find a
copy, and neither Linus (nor anyone else) can change that.
>
There are plenty of rights, but retroactive changes to the license terms
of something you've already distributed is not one of them.
- Jim Bruce
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