Open Source License Changes
Discussions center on whether open source projects can retroactively change licenses on previously released code, with consensus that old versions retain their original licenses and can be forked, while new releases can adopt different terms.
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You can change your license, but it's not retroactive, the code released so far keeps the old license (and can be forked from there). Note that it would be unsustainable otherwise, e.g. release as free, force people to pay later
You can't retroactively change license. Sure, the author could push a new version with a new license, but the old versions would still be governed by the old license.
We're changing the license! Not because of this, but I guess it addresses it.
Changing the license would be very difficult, AIUI they would need to convince everyone who had already contributed to consent to the change in licensing.
You cannot change the license on code that is copyrighted by another party, unless that other party has already licensed you to do so (e.g a release under version x of some license may permit licensing under the terms of later versions.). The whole point of open source licensing is to prevent future releases from being under more restrictive licenses. Copyright holders always have the option to change their own licensing, but they do not have such freedom if their code is a derivative work, esp
You're misreading the article, I think. They didn't release a new version under the GPL. They didn't retroactively undo licensing for older versions.It is not at all clear that you can snap your fingers and renegotiate an existing license arbitrarily like that. You need to do it in advance of the agreement.
Licenses don't work like that. Accidentally releasing something under a license doesn't mean it will forever carry that license.
No. Projects sometimes stop offering the previous license and start using a different one for new work.But if your project is Apache-2, you cannot take away someone's license after the fact. You can only stop giving away new Apache-2 licenses from that point on.The difference here is the license itself has mystery terms that can change at any time. That, is very much not done all the time.
The author could release new versions with a more restrictive license.
The license change is only for future changes. The existing codebase cannot be relicensed as HC does not own full copyright on 100% of contributions AIUI.