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Changing the Software License?
plaa asks: "I was wondering what it would take to change the license of some software. Is it enough if all the authors accept the change or do the licenses have to be 'compatible'? Does this affect the older versions of the program in any way? What if somebody has already used some code from the program in a program of his own? How easy would it be to migrate software to it (so that the older version was not an option to the user)?" What, in particular, do users and developers have to worry about when something that once was free, becomes commercial?
See Wine Hq. The license on Wine just (is in the process of?) changed from GPL to BSD to fit the goals of Wine better.
First of all, all old GPL code is still GPLed. They simply contacted all the authors they could find (and in fact gave them some time decide) Results were about 95% in favor, 2% opposed, and the rest unfindable. The 2% of coders were deemed insignificant in that it wouldn't be too difficult to re-code their contributions. The other will probably end up re-coded eventially if the authoers cannot be found.
There are pros and cons to all licenses, please do not get into an argument of should Wine have changed. They did, and unless you contribute code you have no voice in the change. The topic is can it be done, and obviously they have proven it can. If you want to do the same things read their archives, there is no point in repeating mistakes they made.
For this one there is a short anser and a very short anser.
The short one is that if you can get hold of every single author and they all agree to the new license it doesn't matter what the old license or the new license are. The change wold happen. This happened with KISDN when the authors changed from GPL to a proprietary, per user, per CPU etc... license. Latter after seeing how small the market was and that others wold simply continue building the GPLed version they switched back.
However the change wold have no effect on already released software. If you release something the depends heavily or lightly on a piece of Free Software then the free software is relicensed as something you can't use ( I.e. from LGPL to SCSL ) you must either start from scratch or consider the free code abandoned and find a new maintainer for it ( yourself if you can handle the extra work ).
As for proprietary work going open source that is even simpler. When you work for a company and collect a salary you are essentially selling them full rights to any code you write on the job. If at any time for any reason they feel the need to change the license on that code they don't even have to consult you. If you no longer work for them you will have to here about it on SlashDot just like the rest of us.
The very short anser is that; Yes, the authors can change without contacting anyone who didn't write code and that wold not be retroactive in any way.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Note: IANAL. Do not consider this legal advice.
Yes. Patches in excess of 10 LOC are copyrightable (and thus under current law implicitly copyrighted) material. (the 10 LOC is a matter of legal precedent)
Yes. See above
... nothing ... I don't see the problem there.
I believe you misunderstand the nature of GPL "infection". What you end up with is a compound work carrying the copyrights (and respective licenses) of _both_ copyright holders, each retaining copyright on the portions of the work they contributed. No license is changed.
If the licenses are compatible (e.g. not contradictory -- this is the case with LAME and the ISO encoder), you're fine. If not, you just have a compound work that is illegal to distribute.
Under copyright law, you have no rights to do anything with a copyrighted work except those explicitly granted you by the copyright holder(s) through licensing, and those rights granted you by law and legal precedent (i.e. fair use).
Therefore, if the "compound license" is "impossible" (self-contradictory), then you have no license, and thus no legal right to redistribute the compound work.
It is certainly possible and legal to make a patch for the Linux kernel under a proprietary license, but it would still be illegal to distribute a Linux kernel (in source or binary form) with the patch applied, without prior permission from the copyright holders of the Linux kernel (which in practical terms would mean you being given a copy with a license other than GPL to have your way with).
DNA just wants to be free...
This is a FAQ, and a well-documented FAQ.
As the owner of code, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Period. You can give it to one person on the condition that he may only use it on nights of the full moon, and another under the GPL.
Of course, you can't *stop* the person who got it under GPL from giving a "less-restrictive" copy to the guy who got the full-moon license...
Anyway, this is silly. Users can continue to use the "existing" code under the license they got it under, developers can continue to use the old code under the old terms, and anyone who wants the new stuff can get it under whatever terms the author wants to give them.
Nothing tricky at all. You get something, it has terms, you're under those terms for that thing forever, other things (or even the same thing) may later become available under different terms.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I don't mind at all if derivatives are under the GPL. But I do get annoyed when the only reason you put it under the GPL is because you have a political disagreement with my license.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If all the copyright holders (i.e. ALL the authors) get together, then they can decide to make a non-free version of the program, since it's their property, under ANY license.
But as the number of authors tends to infinity, the difficulty of doing this, even if the others are willing to re-code the "non-content's" work, becomes too great to be practical. Some fraction of the authors will object. So sendmail, the linux kernel, etc. are probably safe.
On the other hand, Mozilla intentionally isn't safe, neither is anything done under Sun's "Community License", or anything under the old X license. This is because those licenses intentionally allow the license writer to allow or make closed binaries that may be derivative works.
The idea in Mozilla's case is that Netscape/AOL/Time/Warner can make and fork their own proprietry browsers and sell them based on your improvements. On the other hand this is not such a bad deal, because by far the greatest part of the code is theirs anyway, and they're giving it to us to play with for free.
The BSD license is also slightly suspect this way, I think, but the real-world risk of it happening with any major project approaches zero (I hope).
However, the upside is that once an open source licensed piece of code is out there and mirrored widely, that version at least will always be there, propagating through the general population. So the effort to fork will only work if the proprietry system is *much* better, which is for well known reasons unlikely.
Go see ESR's work on this stuff at tuxedo.org. Its good and clear.
IANAL.
Here's my question. Can licenses be applied to patches?. One good example of this is the LAME Encoder. A little more background for those who don't know what it is. There is an ISO-based mp3 encoder, along with source code, that is freely available for download. The source code though, is heavily broken in many places, and the sound quality of a ISO-based mp3 encoder is very subpar compared to the commerical mp3 encoder of Fraunhofer, one of the leading companies behind the technology of mp3. However, Fraunhofer owns a lot of patents to the methods behind encoding mp3, so a couple of years ago, they decided to send legal threats everyone that offered a compiled version or modified version of the ISO-based encoder.
LAME, according to the homepage, is "not an mp3 encoder. It is a GPL'd patch against the dist10 ISO demonstration source. LAME is totally incapable of producing an mp3 stream. It is incapable of even being compiled by itself. You need the ISO source for this software to work. The ISO demonstration source is also freely available, but any commercial use (including distributing free encoders) may require a license agreement from FhG."
Here's my point - are patches covered under the GPL (or any license?). If yes, what's going to stop someone from creating a Artistic license patch for Linux the linux kernel? Or a Sun Community License? Or a completely proprietery license? Remember, what LAME does is GPL-infect a piece of code that is has no copyright on, simply by patching it. By extending this analogy a little further, you can see that there is no real need to respect the original author's copyright, since you can just patch his source code with whatever license you got.
So, the answer is yes, you can change the license - it's all too easy. But should it be this way?
A software liscense grants users the right to use a piece of software in a specified manner. Once granted it can't be taken away. There is no way to remove the rights a person has already been granted by the copyright holder. Subsequent releases need not be released under the same terms. A case in point is the 'commercialization' of UNIX by AT&T. All prior work remained in the public domain and became BSD unix.
Many complain about the GPL's restrictiveness, but it is more flexible than most other licences in one crucial way. The standard license which most people apply says:
In my opinion, this is one great, saving feature of the GPL; if at some time the FSF decides that the license needs to be changed, they can affect so, so many pieces of software in existence.
While many may feel that giving this sort of licensing power to the FSF is a bad thing, there are many of us here who feel that the FSF has good intentions, and will appropriately yield the power to release our code in a good manner if we pass on.
I asked the FSF about this one a little while back and it applies to all licenses.
Unless you sign away your copyright for a license, the work is, and always will be, yours. The license only tells *other* people what rights they have.
If you aren't the full copyright owner, you MUST get the other author's permission. Once you have that, you can change the license without worrying about legal stuff. I'd recommend you get it in writing if you have physical contact with the other authors.
This is how people can release source code under multiple licenses. There's nothing stopping you from releasing something under the artistic license, the GPL and having a closed source version at the same time!
In short: if everyone agrees, everything is A-OK.
æeee!
By default, everything copyrightable is Copyright The Author, All Rights Reserved. Licenses are just contracts to grant you, the user, certain copy rights (like the right to install it onto your computer or put it on an ftp site).
You can hand out as many of these contracts as you like, they can all be different, and you can change new ones that you hand out, but once you give someone a license to do something with that code, you cannot retract that license unless there was a termination clause in the license.
Free software licenses are kind of unique because they license everyone automatically.
So, say ssh was created and licensed to everyone under the BSD license. SSH Communications Security , the owners of this code, decide they can make money off of ssh, so they release it under a license that suits them. Anyone that had a previously-licensed copy of ssh is still free to do anything they like under the BSD license, including fork it into OpenSSH.
In order to prevent people from using the old code under the old license, you either have to terminate their license (using a termination clause already in the license agreement) or you have to make the old code worthless to them. Usually any progress in this direction is at the expense of your users and is considered evil. :)
If you are the author of foobarbaz, a shareware app for Linux, and you include code from other people's software (other libraries, etc) then you have to respect those licenses (i.e. releasing under GPL would be a bad idea) or reimplement those functions so that you don't need the other libraries. If it's under 10 lines of code, it's fair use to do anything with it (less than 10 lines of code are not copy protected, thus no licenses are needed). If your buddy helped write code for foobarbaz, and there's more than 10 lines, he/she has copyright over his portions and you need to ask permission from him/her first.
This is why the Netscape -> Mozilla transition had to rip out a lot of things like Java and RSA support.