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The copyright owner can switch license on any future versions of the software at any point. But the complication is that if the software project is made up of
by jarofgreen 6y ago
The copyright owner can switch license on any future versions of the software at any point.
But the complication is that if the software project is made up of contributions from 100 different people, it's not immediately clear who the copyright owner is. In the worst case you might have to get permission from all 100 people before you can switch.
This is the problem contributor agreements were designed to solve.
Of course, some people call this a feature and not a bug.
- kevincox 6y agoIANAL but I believe that you can always switch to a strictly more restrictive license because doing so is effectively licensing new changes with the new license. You can't switch to a license that is less restrictive without agreement of the owners because that would require granting additional rights to the existing code.