right but unless you sign a contributor licensing agreement when you contribute then the copyright owner can’t relicense code you contributed.
so if you contribute to a GPL codebase it’s pretty legally perilous to try to unilaterally relicense code that isn’t “yours”.
this is pretty nebulous territory anyways, but I’d argue it’s pretty unethical to relicense to a more restrictive license essentially “taking” the GPL code from contributors
Well yes and no you can release them going forward under a new licence. If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement. Thats absolutly possible to do.
Revoking licenses is alot harder though and changing the lizens from a foss on to another is often confusing and business inapropiate. However it is legal.
Assuming newer versions are derived from code that was licensed GPL in the old version, the newer versions (which include new code) are also licensed GPL, whether the person writing the new code likes it or not.
Well yes and no you can release them going forward under a new licence. If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement. Thats absolutly possible to do.
Revoking licenses is alot harder though and changing the lizens from a foss on to another is often confusing and business inapropiate. However it is legal.
Edit:
A license is for not vopyright owners not the copyright holder. The copyright holder can basically do whatever they want.
the copyright owner can do whatever they want, but they can’t really revoke a GPL license. that’s not really a thing.
and the part about
If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement.
seems to me like you are implying that “use under the old license” means “run the program on my own machine”, but that’s not true, since GPL explicitly allows redistribution and modification.
under a GPL license, you effectively give up control over your software voluntarily:
The GNU General Public Licenses are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software.
(highlighted the relevant portion for your convenience)
this makes revoking the license effectively impossible.
you could continue development under a different license, but that gets legally tricky very quickly.
for example: all the code previously under GPL, stays under GPL. so if someone where to modify those parts of the code and redistribute it as a patch, you couldn’t legally do anything about that.
which seems to be what the OOP claims the change to a CC-BY-NC-ND forbids, apparently misunderstanding, that this new license only applies to code added to the repo since the license change, not the code from before the license change.
fair enough, but that doesn’t mean he has to do everything anyone asks him. he’s still within his rights to close the source down and obliterate it from the internet. others will come and pick up the torch.
The original code was GPL which he illegally re-licensed to creative commons.
If you are the copyright owner you can relicense any way you want learn some copyright law.
You’ll find the copyright owner is Sony.
right but unless you sign a contributor licensing agreement when you contribute then the copyright owner can’t relicense code you contributed.
so if you contribute to a GPL codebase it’s pretty legally perilous to try to unilaterally relicense code that isn’t “yours”.
this is pretty nebulous territory anyways, but I’d argue it’s pretty unethical to relicense to a more restrictive license essentially “taking” the GPL code from contributors
This is true, but it’s also true that the older gpl versions can’t be revoked.
Well yes and no you can release them going forward under a new licence. If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement. Thats absolutly possible to do. Revoking licenses is alot harder though and changing the lizens from a foss on to another is often confusing and business inapropiate. However it is legal.
Assuming newer versions are derived from code that was licensed GPL in the old version, the newer versions (which include new code) are also licensed GPL, whether the person writing the new code likes it or not.
yes you can!
…for new versions. not for already released ones.
at least not with most common copyleft/open source licenses.
edit: assuming a solo project. see below.
Only if you are the sole contributor or get a written consent from all contributors. GPL doesn’t hand over the copyright to the maintainer.
Dolphin is the poster child example of changing licences properly. It was a painful job just getting in touch with all the long inactive devs.
yes, correct, assuming a solo project!
thank you for the correction.
Well yes and no you can release them going forward under a new licence. If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement. Thats absolutly possible to do.
Revoking licenses is alot harder though and changing the lizens from a foss on to another is often confusing and business inapropiate. However it is legal.
Edit: A license is for not vopyright owners not the copyright holder. The copyright holder can basically do whatever they want.
yes and no:
the copyright owner can do whatever they want, but they can’t really revoke a GPL license. that’s not really a thing.
and the part about
seems to me like you are implying that “use under the old license” means “run the program on my own machine”, but that’s not true, since GPL explicitly allows redistribution and modification.
under a GPL license, you effectively give up control over your software voluntarily:
(highlighted the relevant portion for your convenience)
this makes revoking the license effectively impossible.
you could continue development under a different license, but that gets legally tricky very quickly.
for example: all the code previously under GPL, stays under GPL. so if someone where to modify those parts of the code and redistribute it as a patch, you couldn’t legally do anything about that.
which seems to be what the OOP claims the change to a CC-BY-NC-ND forbids, apparently misunderstanding, that this new license only applies to code added to the repo since the license change, not the code from before the license change.
fair enough, but that doesn’t mean he has to do everything anyone asks him. he’s still within his rights to close the source down and obliterate it from the internet. others will come and pick up the torch.
And likewise, that doesn’t mean people aren’t allowed to give him shit for doing it.