I get the feeling the FSF may have a thing or two to say about this. If it was possible to simply rescind the license from GPL code, there would have been several court cases that would have been muuuuuch shorter.
Simply put, once the GPL license is applied, authors can only relicense future versions. Anyone can fork old versions and start their own development branch under a different name. The GPL also does not provide restrictions allowing authors to terminate the license for individuals while still maintaining the code as available as GPL.
In the USA, a license is revocable (absent an attached interest.)
(An attached interest generally arises when a licensee paid for a
copyright license contract.
Thus they "buy" the "terms" and the courts will hold the grantor to the
contract.
Where there is not an interest, the license is revocable)
To put it simply: you pay nothing, you get nothing.
Only the continued magnanimity of the copyright owner allows you to
continue to use, modify, redistribute the copyright owner's work.
If you anger him he may decide to revoke your bare gratuitous license.
The linux kernel contributors who own the Copyright to their code can do
the same, should they dislike the "CoC" and having their speech
controlled by do-nothings for the sake of women's empowerment over the
men who actually built the whole thing (for free!).
We have received a DMCA complaint regarding content that is under your
control. We\u2019ve included the entire DMCA request below:
[\u2026]
If you believe you are not infringing you have the ability to file a
counter-notice as per DMCA. A counter complaint requires:
Your name
Your address
Your email address
A digital signature
And statement under penalty of perjury that you have "a good faith
belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake
or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled."
If we do not receive a counter-notice within 48 hours, your account
will be disabled and the content in question removed.
Regards,
Cynthia Ng
Support Agent, GitLab Inc.
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Simply put, once the GPL license is applied, authors can only relicense future versions. Anyone can fork old versions and start their own development branch under a different name. The GPL also does not provide restrictions allowing authors to terminate the license for individuals while still maintaining the code as available as GPL.