5 ms·

Does that work? I guess, I hadn't much considered whether that was a thing one could do.

by drdeca 11y ago

protomyth 11y ago
Only on the new code you write, as I have not seen any license that allows removal of copyright or relicensing.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
reitanqild 11y ago
I guess you can take code under a permissive license, fork it and release it under a less permissive license yes. IANAL though. That is my whole point: MIT and BSD code is free-er than GPL and AGPL because you can go from MIT and BSD to AGPL but not the other way around.
- kuschku 11y ago
  But that’s exactly why it’s less free. With BSD code, the majority of devs can always sell out, and make sure all future modifications are purely proprietary. We’ve seen that happen on Android. Nowadays neither the launcher, nor the keyboard, nor the dialer, nor the contacts, nor the calendar, nor the device search is open source anymore.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Could equally well happen if the code was released under GPL as long as all copyright holders agree?
    - cyphar 11y ago
      In theory yes, in practice you couldn't even hope to get all of the copyright holders' permission. You'd have to surgically remove the code of everyone who didn't consent to the relicensing (good luck) and everybody would hate you for it.
      - reitanqild 11y ago
        Well, then you have code written for a company on company and code written under a contributor agreement. A lot of code that ended up under free licenses has been proprietary first and while they cannot revoke the free licenses from already released code they can make their next release non-free as long as they haven't accepted outside contributions without a suitable contributor agreement.
        cyphar 11y ago
        > Well, then you have code written for a company on company and code written under a contributor agreement. Not all contributor agreements are equal, and I would recommend choosing which projects you will not contribute to based on their CLAs. If they ask you to give them copyright without good reason, they are preparing to fuck you over. Ironically, this is why I will not contribute to GNU because they require copyright assignment so they have a higher chance of winning conservancy cases (IANAL, but I have one in my family and this is bullshit in my country but may be true in the US, so I feel conflicted about it). > A lot of code that ended up under free licenses has been proprietary first and while they cannot revoke the free licenses from already released code they can make their next release non-free as long as they haven't accepted outside contributions without a suitable contributor agreement. The only example I can think of is OpenSolaris (which required contributors to sign a CLA that assigned copyright to Sun/Oracle). Most modern projects don't work like that, and if you have a copyleft license, a company could not legally create a proprietary fork and distribute it. Besides, if that happens you end up with free software forks (illumos in the OpenSolaris case) and everyone moves to using that.
- jnbiche 11y ago
  No, you can't relicense someone else's MIT or BSD code, only code you've written. Only a copyright holder can license his/her code, or someone to whom the copyright holder has given explicit permission to do so.
  - cyphar 11y ago
    Yes you can. The MIT and BSD licenses explicitly allow sublicensing. That's part of their whole schtick and why free software people don't particularly like them (you can sublicense them to be proprietary).
    - jrochkind1 11y ago
      The MIT license explicitly (um, er, literally, explicitly) allows sub-licensing by mentioning it. The BSD does not mention sub-licensing, so I wouldn't say it explicitly allows it. But yeah, it effectively allows it, of a fork anyway.
  - jrochkind1 11y ago
    Technically true, you can only offer a license on code you've written. But effectively you can still take a MIT/BSD project, and fork it and release as another license, legally. The original code will still be under the permissive license. But you can take it, and fork it, and continue to develop the fork, and all your new additions can be licensed under the more restrictive one (including GPL). To be clear about what's going on, you could put a notice saying that anything taken from Source Project X was MIT, all further changes were (GPL). Perfectly legal. But really, how would people know which parts are which except diff'ing it, they might as well just go back to the original -- or they can always diff if if they want regardless of license of course. MIT/BSD don't require attribution or anything, they just say do whatever you want with the code. So forking and just saying "the license is [eg] GPL" is pretty much the same thing. It's legal. You can't stop people from continuing to use the original code without complying with the GPL, but your fork is GPL. IANAL. Maybe if it ever got litigated it'd end up different. It might not get litigated, for a while.

Does that work? I guess, I hadn't much considered whether that was a thing one could do.

by drdeca 11y ago

Does that work? I guess, I hadn't much considered whether that was a thing one could do.

protomyth 11y ago

Only on the new code you write, as I have not seen any license that allows removal of copyright or relicensing.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

reitanqild 11y ago

I guess you can take code under a permissive license, fork it and release it under a less permissive license yes. IANAL though. That is my whole point: MIT and BSD code is free-er than GPL and AGPL because you can go from MIT and BSD to AGPL but not the other way around.

kuschku 11y ago
But that’s exactly why it’s less free. With BSD code, the majority of devs can always sell out, and make sure all future modifications are purely proprietary. We’ve seen that happen on Android. Nowadays neither the launcher, nor the keyboard, nor the dialer, nor the contacts, nor the calendar, nor the device search is open source anymore.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Could equally well happen if the code was released under GPL as long as all copyright holders agree?
  - cyphar 11y ago
    In theory yes, in practice you couldn't even hope to get all of the copyright holders' permission. You'd have to surgically remove the code of everyone who didn't consent to the relicensing (good luck) and everybody would hate you for it.
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      Well, then you have code written for a company on company and code written under a contributor agreement. A lot of code that ended up under free licenses has been proprietary first and while they cannot revoke the free licenses from already released code they can make their next release non-free as long as they haven't accepted outside contributions without a suitable contributor agreement.
      - cyphar 11y ago
        > Well, then you have code written for a company on company and code written under a contributor agreement. Not all contributor agreements are equal, and I would recommend choosing which projects you will not contribute to based on their CLAs. If they ask you to give them copyright without good reason, they are preparing to fuck you over. Ironically, this is why I will not contribute to GNU because they require copyright assignment so they have a higher chance of winning conservancy cases (IANAL, but I have one in my family and this is bullshit in my country but may be true in the US, so I feel conflicted about it). > A lot of code that ended up under free licenses has been proprietary first and while they cannot revoke the free licenses from already released code they can make their next release non-free as long as they haven't accepted outside contributions without a suitable contributor agreement. The only example I can think of is OpenSolaris (which required contributors to sign a CLA that assigned copyright to Sun/Oracle). Most modern projects don't work like that, and if you have a copyleft license, a company could not legally create a proprietary fork and distribute it. Besides, if that happens you end up with free software forks (illumos in the OpenSolaris case) and everyone moves to using that.
jnbiche 11y ago
No, you can't relicense someone else's MIT or BSD code, only code you've written. Only a copyright holder can license his/her code, or someone to whom the copyright holder has given explicit permission to do so.
- cyphar 11y ago
  Yes you can. The MIT and BSD licenses explicitly allow sublicensing. That's part of their whole schtick and why free software people don't particularly like them (you can sublicense them to be proprietary).
  - jrochkind1 11y ago
    The MIT license explicitly (um, er, literally, explicitly) allows sub-licensing by mentioning it. The BSD does not mention sub-licensing, so I wouldn't say it explicitly allows it. But yeah, it effectively allows it, of a fork anyway.
- jrochkind1 11y ago
  Technically true, you can only offer a license on code you've written. But effectively you can still take a MIT/BSD project, and fork it and release as another license, legally. The original code will still be under the permissive license. But you can take it, and fork it, and continue to develop the fork, and all your new additions can be licensed under the more restrictive one (including GPL). To be clear about what's going on, you could put a notice saying that anything taken from Source Project X was MIT, all further changes were (GPL). Perfectly legal. But really, how would people know which parts are which except diff'ing it, they might as well just go back to the original -- or they can always diff if if they want regardless of license of course. MIT/BSD don't require attribution or anything, they just say do whatever you want with the code. So forking and just saying "the license is [eg] GPL" is pretty much the same thing. It's legal. You can't stop people from continuing to use the original code without complying with the GPL, but your fork is GPL. IANAL. Maybe if it ever got litigated it'd end up different. It might not get litigated, for a while.