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if you own the copyright to a peice of code, you are free to relicense it however you want, at any time. Existing code in the wild will keep the license it was
by throwaway2048 10y ago
if you own the copyright to a peice of code, you are free to relicense it however you want, at any time.
Existing code in the wild will keep the license it was distributed with, but nothing obliges you to keep updating it.
- lucb1e 10y ago1) GPL does make statements about the output of it (i.e. binary builds, which is distributed over the Google Play Store). The app itself does not mention it's GPL, but Telegram.org does. 2) The old code was GPL, so the new one (unless they rewrote it) is a derived work. I'm not sure the second one applies if it's the original author who relicenses it, but I'm reasonably sure it's at least a legal grey area, and the first one would still be a thing.
- throwaway2048 10y agoIt is not a legal gray area, this is the basis of a lot of products with open source versions and "pro" versions with extra features that cost money.
- lucb1e 10y agoAlright, what about the first?
- lolikoisuru 10y agoThe thing is, Telegram only owns portion of the copyright. There are also a few other copyright holders as a result of their commits having been pulled in. Telegram cannot legally relicense the codebase without first getting approval from those people. I really doubt that they have done that and if I'm true the app is still GPL.