• Blisterexe@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    7 months ago

    doesnt it require any modified versions of the code be shared, preventing a change to a non-copyleft liscence?

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      Not if the copyright owner changes the license. When you are the creator you can do what you please. With that being said you can not do that if the public writes code. That’s why you see CLAs (contributor license agreement)

      • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        Important to note that this only applies to future releases by the legal copyright owner. If the community doesn’t like it (and they often don’t), someone else can fork it from the last time it was GPL, and contributors can abandon the original codebase in favor of the GPL fork. As a result, it is extremely unwise to try to de-GPL software with a lot of contributors, as the copyright holder doesn’t have a great chance at competing with a fork if contributors jump ship.

        Linus Torvalds could legally pivot Linux to a proprietary license if he wanted to, but we’d probably see it replaced with a fork called “Binix” or something within a few months, and he’d be in charge of abandonware at that point.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Agreed although Linux would be really hard to relicense. You would need to get approval from every single person who every contributed