IIRC, it was the lead developer who implemented the original prototype in his own time who decided the license, not the Blender project. I don't think Cycles w

IIRC, it was the lead developer who implemented the original prototype in his own time who decided the license, not the Blender project. I don't think Cycles was ever GPL as it was developed as a standalone project that could be integrated into Blender rather than an integrated renderer that was split out.