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> Nowadays it is increasingly likely that my effort is eventually going to be relicensed and repackaged into non-free software without my consent, and no one (n

by bigstrat2003 2y ago

> Nowadays it is increasingly likely that my effort is eventually going to be relicensed and repackaged into non-free software without my consent, and no one (not even me myself) will be allowed to continue to benefit from my work. I disagree with the conclusion you have drawn here. In the scenario you describe, you (and everyone else) can continue to benefit from your work. The original project is still there, it's still just as useful and open as the day you made your contribution. How then is anyone prevented from continuing to benefit?

andrewstuart2 2y ago
While true, I think the reality is that this is still being figured out in the legal system right now. Forks of redis and hashicorp products should be completely fine theoretically, but there's a lot of legal chaos right now with the owners of the BSL versions trying to figure out if/how to prosecute the open versions for adding similar features to the "source available" versions. I've heard contributors to the forks on popular podcasts having to say "I'm not sure I can comment on this right now" due to ongoing battles and legal advice. I'd love it to be cut and dry fork-wise but there are parties with vested financial interests trying to keep the OSS forks frozen in time. If anything, "source available" is almost weaponized because if you've looked at the available source, it's tenuous. And if two implementations of the same feature look similar (as they will) it might not be as easy to convince a jury that it's not a copying of copyrighted now-unlicensed code.