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Jeff Waugh wrote:

| <quote who="Brad Kowalczyk">
|
|> Just one small Q, lets say I develop an app and release it under
|> say the GPL, if I then improve on this app adding new features
|> and functionality and wish to make a $ with it can I then release
|> it under a <shudder>>closed source</shudder> license even though
|> it is heavily based on GPL'd code?
|
|
| Because you hold the copyright, yes.
|
| Here's an example:
|
| Ximian wrote the Evolution groupware suite, so hold the copyright.
| They require copyright attribution from contributors so that they
| continue to hold copyright over the complete work. That allowed
| them to ship Evolution with the Exchange connector (which until a
| few weeks ago, was closed).
|
| If their contributors had not assigned copyright, Ximian would not
| be able to ship a proprietary module along with their contributor's
| code. Quite a few projects work in a similar fashion
| (FSF/GNU-backed projects, Twisted, etc).

Jeff

A few questions if I may.

Are there any projects where subsequent developers have also dual
licensed their contributions under the GPL and a closed source
license? Essentially they would trying to do the same as Ximian or
MySQL, viz. have an income stream from commercial extension and
application while making their code freely available under the GPL.

Alternatively are their commercial contracts for assigning copyright
under dual licensing? (e.g. I get one dollar for every seat where this
application is used under a commercial license.) Or is this too messy
to handle in practice?

David

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