3 ms·
But you might be able to pay rent with it if those not wanting to feed back their work wanted the code enough to negotiate a paid licence under other terms. Th
by dspillett 7y ago
But you might be able to pay rent with it if those not wanting to feed back their work wanted the code enough to negotiate a paid licence under other terms.
That can be messy for projects with many past maintainers where the licence options at the time of individual contributions did not explicitly allow this or arbitrary relicensing, but in this case (single current maintainer, other contributions made under a licence that allows him to do this) it needn't be.
- javajosh 7y agoI'm not sure how that works, legally. If I understand you, you're suggesting that you can GPL your work to create leverage in a future negotiation with a potential user who wants to modify it privately and/or integrate it into proprietary software. Can you un-GPL your work for a single entity? Doesn't that mean that you yourself are violating the GPL? I'm legitimately asking, not being rhetorical.
- beering 7y agoIf you're the sole author of the code (or own the copyright or have the ability to relicense), then you can. It's not "un-GPL"ing the code because whatever you GPL'd will continue to be available under the GPL forever. But you can say, hey, I'm ALSO releasing this code under a separate commercial license that costs $X dollars to get. You can't infringe on your own copyright!
- javajosh 7y agoWell, that's pretty cool actually. I was unaware that was an option, and I'm pretty sure that many other people don't know that's an option either! It seems eminently fair to ask for money from people who are making money from your thing (and if they aren't, to not ask for anything).