On Monday 26 July 2004 12:09 am, Linux Lingam wrote: > dear all, > > i understand that an author owns the copyright to a software. under > this 'ownership' the author may then decide to GPL the software, > allowing others more flexible access to the software, under the > restrictions imposed by the GPL. This also allows contributors to add > their own code or further develop the software. > Yet, can the original author choose to un-gpl a software? i have seen > some extremely rare instances over the past few years of software that > were released under the GPL, and then retracted into a proprietory > license.
My understanding. You cant un-gpl what has already been distributed. You can only un-gpl the next still-to-be version. The older version enjoys the same rights provided by GPL and can be forked or extended by everybody. This is not GPL specific - every licence is followed like this. e.g. the Xfree86 project, which changed its licence midway causing all major linux distributions to drop it. The x.org project takes over the last DSFG free release and forked/maintained it from there. > > what happens to the code contributed by other developers who wrote for > what to them appeared to be a GPL-ed software then? If there has been any external contribution, the assent of each of them needs to be taken to change the licence, else their contribution has to be totally purged from the whole. Check kernel archives and other similar discussions for the same. Alan Cox has threatened more than once to stop contributing if the nature of the kernel licence changes. > > can the original/initial author, at a later date, choose to release > the software under dual, multiple licenses too, such as Apache+GPL, or > Apache+GPL+LGPL, or the QT or the staggered Ghostscript kind of > license? Yes. The same constraints apply for the newer licence as in my last para. > > what happens to the code contributed by others? don't such developers > have issues? Mentioned above. > > what if an athor hands over a project to a maintainer, who in > conjunction with a larger community generates and gets generated code > far in excess of the initial author's offering? can such a > community-based project decide at a later date to un-gpl, or gpl++ > (with dual or multiple licenses) the software? what if the initial > author wishes to do this but the maintainer/community doesn't. or > vice-versa? You cant "undo" the licence of software which has already been released - it is similar to reneging on a mutually agreed upon contract. > > sidenote: i do remember that staroffice was an opensource project > (gpl?) from some german developers, until sun became its "vidhaata" > (took ownership? purchased? how?) and forked it as openoffice under > GPL, and staroffice under SISL something. how does that work? They bought over staroffice, and relicenced it SCPL. Since star was the only contributor to it, and previous versions didnt give any rights to the users, making it free-er is easy. However, it is not easy for the other way around - making a software less free. - Sandip -- Sandip Bhattacharya sandip (at) puroga.com Puroga Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Work: http://www.puroga.com Home: http://www.sandipb.net GPG: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3 _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
