[H-GEN] GPL -> Non-GPL licence change

[Anthony Towns]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 08:58:29PM +1000, Michael Anthon wrote:
> Someone has written an application, say UBeautProgram and released it under
> the GPL as version 1.0.  Other people say "hey, this is great!" and thereby
> set about working on this application, adding features, fixing bugs and a
> lot of this is submitted back to the original author and is incorporated
> into the application.

So, at this point there's lots of bits of code floating around:

	UBeautProgram 1.0, copyright by Joe Blow, licensed under the GPL
	UBeautProgram patch X, by John Doe
	UBeautProgram patch Y, by Jane Doe

UBP patch X could be:
	not copyrighted at all, being too trivial to attract any protection
	copyright John Doe, and unlicensed, hence unusable by anyone else
	copyright John Doe, but not licensed under the GPL, meaning John
		and others aren't allowed to distribute binaries
	copyright John Doe, and licensed under the same terms as UBP 1.0
	copyright Joe Blow, after copyright was transferred from John Doe

UBP patch Y could be in any similar situation.

> The author then releases version 2.0 of UBeautProgram and says "Hey, I've
> now decided that this will be licenced under the QPL and if you want to use
> it for commercial purposes you have to pay me money".

Uh, the GPL's actually a pretty good license for "if you want to use it
for commercial (read: proprietry, closed source) purposes, pay me money",
and that's the reason Qt is now available under the GPL.

Anyway. If UBP 2.0 includes code from UBP Patch X, or UBP Patch Y, then
Joe Blow has to respect the copyright and licensing terms of that code. If
Mr Blow has the copyright on the code (and this could, conceivably,
happen implicitly by John or Jane just sending in a patch and not adding a
"copyright" line or otherwise caring), then he can use whatever licensing
terms he wants. If Mr or Ms Doe have the copyright on portions of the
code, then their licensing terms have to be respected. The GPL, eg,
doesn't allow you to distribute binaries made from sources that aren't
(essentially) entirely GPLed, whether over the Internet, or for profit.

> My question is this.  Where does this leave the other people that have
> contributed code into the code base for this project?   Can the author
> actually change from the GPL like this without violating the GPL?

On his own code, certainly.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

     ``BAM! Science triumphs again!'' 
                    -- http://www.angryflower.com/vegeta.gif
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 350 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.humbug.org.au/pipermail/general/attachments/20020412/098e61aa/attachment.sig>