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So weird that this person took contributions from others then made it closed source. It doesn’t seem right, but not a copyright expert.

KennyBlanken 2y ago
Was Material even his work in the first place?
- mook 2y ago
  Looks like it was, or at least the initial commit was. This was back in 2017. https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commits/?after=0c9892823accd22589695f04af2fc25dd6f3a137+1020 https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commits... I'm not sure why the initial commit already says "official", but that's almost a decade ago.
  - joshka 2y ago
    The initial commit was in 2015 and was MIT licensed for a couple of years before it was changed to Apache licensed. It's unclear if any of the other contributors gave permission for this change to happen. https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commit/e98b4029ee5d09f5261fa1961cb0e3129a7eb8cf https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commit/...
schneems 2y ago
Speaking generally: It’s assumed that your contribution will be licensed with the current license (generally). Maintainers can change the license but that wouldn’t affect prior contributions. Basically anything up to that license change would still have the original license. This is what makes forks possible when popular software changes their license. In order to go back in history and change a license, you need either the consent of your contributors or a document that would grant you the power to do that. A CLA could (but not all CLAs will) grant a maintainer to change a license at will back in time. Other famous software that has seen a license change: Redis and Terraform. In those cases the license changed but already released software is still available with the old license and that old license allows for forks.
- alwayslikethis 2y ago
  My understanding is that permissive licenses (BSD,MIT) can generally be relicensed. For example you can fork a MIT project under GPL. But to do the same for a GPL project requires agreeement from all copyright owners, or just you if you made everyone sign a CLA. This is the whole point of GPL.
  - bad_user 2y ago
    Your general understanding is wrong, as there's nothing in either BSD or MIT that allows for re-licensing, and nothing else gives you that right. You can incorporate MIT/BSD code in a proprietary project, but that imported code itself remains BSD/MIT licensed. For many projects, this is a technicality, but no, you can't claim copyright on MIT/BSD code that isn't yours.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      >as there's nothing in either BSD or MIT that allows for re-licensing But also nothing preventing you from doing it. MIT can be relicensed, for sure.
      - jenadine 2y ago
        Of course not. What makes you believe that? The MIT license is not very long, and it contains this sentence: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Which clearly state that you can't remove that license to put your own.
        Tomte 2y ago
        > What makes you believe that? Probably the sublicense wording that many techies confuse with relicensing. Also sloppy wording in discussions like HN where "relicense" is sometimes used as a shortcut for "combined with a compatibly-licensed work in a larger work that can be used under the whole-work license".
rldjbpin 2y ago
just like many open-source projects (primarily maintained by a company) turning their projects non-commercial, a la redhat, terraform

KennyBlanken 2y ago

Was Material even his work in the first place?

mook 2y ago
Looks like it was, or at least the initial commit was. This was back in 2017. https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commits/?after=0c9892823accd22589695f04af2fc25dd6f3a137+1020 https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commits... I'm not sure why the initial commit already says "official", but that's almost a decade ago.
- joshka 2y ago
  The initial commit was in 2015 and was MIT licensed for a couple of years before it was changed to Apache licensed. It's unclear if any of the other contributors gave permission for this change to happen. https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commit/e98b4029ee5d09f5261fa1961cb0e3129a7eb8cf https://github.com/material-theme/vsc-material-theme/commit/...

schneems 2y ago

Speaking generally: It’s assumed that your contribution will be licensed with the current license (generally). Maintainers can change the license but that wouldn’t affect prior contributions. Basically anything up to that license change would still have the original license. This is what makes forks possible when popular software changes their license. In order to go back in history and change a license, you need either the consent of your contributors or a document that would grant you the power to do that. A CLA could (but not all CLAs will) grant a maintainer to change a license at will back in time. Other famous software that has seen a license change: Redis and Terraform. In those cases the license changed but already released software is still available with the old license and that old license allows for forks.

alwayslikethis 2y ago
My understanding is that permissive licenses (BSD,MIT) can generally be relicensed. For example you can fork a MIT project under GPL. But to do the same for a GPL project requires agreeement from all copyright owners, or just you if you made everyone sign a CLA. This is the whole point of GPL.
- bad_user 2y ago
  Your general understanding is wrong, as there's nothing in either BSD or MIT that allows for re-licensing, and nothing else gives you that right. You can incorporate MIT/BSD code in a proprietary project, but that imported code itself remains BSD/MIT licensed. For many projects, this is a technicality, but no, you can't claim copyright on MIT/BSD code that isn't yours.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    >as there's nothing in either BSD or MIT that allows for re-licensing But also nothing preventing you from doing it. MIT can be relicensed, for sure.
    - jenadine 2y ago
      Of course not. What makes you believe that? The MIT license is not very long, and it contains this sentence: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Which clearly state that you can't remove that license to put your own.
      - Tomte 2y ago
        > What makes you believe that? Probably the sublicense wording that many techies confuse with relicensing. Also sloppy wording in discussions like HN where "relicense" is sometimes used as a shortcut for "combined with a compatibly-licensed work in a larger work that can be used under the whole-work license".

rldjbpin 2y ago

just like many open-source projects (primarily maintained by a company) turning their projects non-commercial, a la redhat, terraform