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Almost all relicensing efforts are actually most hindered by not being able to contact people. If you can't contact someone who holds the copyright to something
by ghusbands 5y ago
Almost all relicensing efforts are actually most hindered by not being able to contact people. If you can't contact someone who holds the copyright to something, you can't change the licensing rights over it.
A lot of projects have copyright assignment, to allow for relicensing. They typically ask for you to assign copyright to them or to a company they control, so that they can still relicense as they see fit, in future.
- dodgepong 5y agoIt's worth noting that if someone can't be contacted, the maintainers aren't out of luck yet. If the contribution is deleted (and then possibly reimplemented later by someone with whom the project _is_ in contact) then the issue is resolved. It can be a lot of work, though, depending on the size and importance of the contribution, and reimplementing the code in a way that doesn't derive from the original submission can be difficult or ambiguous.