71
votes
If I change the license of my project, can someone use the old license by navigating through Git history?
This is a tricky question. Open source licenses are generally irrevocable. Once you publish something under a license, you can relicense future versions but cannot retroactively change the license. ...
- 39.3k
60
votes
Accepted
Can I relicense an abandoned GPL project if the copyright owners are no longer responsive?
The GPL, and software licensing in general, must be understood in the wider context of copyright.
Only the copyright holder of a software can issue a license.
You have no rights to the software, ...
- 39.3k
55
votes
Accepted
Do I have to change license of fork if mainstream changes license?
Not only are you not required to change the licence, you are not permitted to. The code you took at the time was, according to you, conveyed under GPLv3. You've worked on it, and made a derivative ...
- 51.1k
45
votes
Accepted
Relicensing content under CC-BY-SA
I don't think so, no. CC-BY-SA 3.0 allows in s4 that
You may Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work only under the terms of this License ... This Section ... applies to the Work as incorporated ...
- 51.1k
44
votes
Can there be a copyright on negative code?
For me, this exposes a weakness in the mental model many coders seem to have about the operation of copyright.
Consider a pile of bricks, representing code contributions to a work. In one (...
- 51.1k
29
votes
Is it possible to change the current GPLv3 license to something else?
Anyone who received the code under the GPLv3 can redistribute it under those terms forever (and so, too, may those recipients, etc.) so if the set of recipients of your code so far is a nonempty set, ...
- 36.4k
24
votes
Accepted
Can I relicense my own GPL code into Apache/MIT?
As the copyright holder you are in no way bound by any open source license you choose to distribute your own work under.
While you cannot retroactively change the license terms of a particular ...
- 2,456
23
votes
Accepted
How to deal with licences after forking a project?
No, you are not allowed to change the copyright notice. Indeed, the license text states pretty clearly:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or ...
- 5,687
20
votes
Accepted
Remove BSD LICENSE file while importing code into GPL project
The short answer is no. You cannot remove a BSD license notice, otherwise you are no longer licensed per the BSD (many variants) that all share the essential requirement to retain the copyright and ...
- 14.7k
20
votes
Accepted
Can I change the license of a forked project to the MIT if the license of the parent project has changed from the GPL to the MIT?
That depends.
If you didn't make any changes in your fork of the project, you can just update your fork to include the latest upstream changes and get the license change along with it.
If the ...
- 32.1k
18
votes
Accepted
Relicensing an MIT licensed project under the GPL that has non code contributions from others
Just like everyone can take your MIT-licensed software and make it proprietary without having to ask all of its authors for permission, you can take your MIT-licensed software and license it under the ...
- 5,680
18
votes
Accepted
License validity of unreleased project
You can do nothing. Releasing software has nothing to do with version numbering; it is a matter of conveying it (which includes "making it available") to others, and making the licence terms under ...
- 51.1k
17
votes
Can there be a copyright on negative code?
Not all changes are of sufficient novelty to constitute something copyrightable, whether they are additions or deletions.
For a simple example, consider any old out of copyright song or hymn of five ...
- 7,973
17
votes
How can I protect the code from being 'rephrased' by AI to avoid license limitations?
I'm not sure anything needs to be done. Historically, the creation of a translation of a copyrighted work required the permission of the rightsholder. Others have argued that a machine translation ...
- 51.1k
17
votes
Accepted
Can the GNU LGPL be removed from a piece of software?
Interesting one.
Assuming the publisher is the sole rightsholder, yes, they are perfectly free to relicense the work; however, they can't revoke the licence on existing copies that are already out ...
- 51.1k
17
votes
Accepted
How do I resolve license terms conflict when forking?
Whilst I completely agree with my esteemed colleage about the first part of the answer (the project have indicated they'll reject non-MIT-licensed contributions), I beg to differ about the second part....
- 51.1k
15
votes
Accepted
PySimpleGUI, until now, has been distributed under the GPLV3, but just became a subscription model. How does that work?
Isn't the prior version still FOSS?
Licences do not inhere in software, but instead their obligations attach to the recipient through the act of conveyance. If you received a copy of this software ...
- 51.1k
14
votes
Can I relicense my own GPL code into Apache/MIT?
If you hold the copyright to some code (usually, because you are the author), you may license that code however you please, and you may issue different licenses at any time. The matter of revoking ...
- 36.4k
14
votes
Can I relicense an abandoned GPL project if the copyright owners are no longer responsive?
Copyright does not allow for that. You need to wait 70 years after the copyright holders' deaths to do this.
In that respect it is no different from a closed source license: If you want to change the ...
- 241
14
votes
Accepted
If a project only includes a copy of the GPL, can it be relicensed under any version?
Your hunch of "no" seems correct to me. The GPL FAQ has this to say about standalone copies of the GPL without an explicit license grant:
Is it enough just to put a copy of the GNU GPL in ...
- 36.4k
14
votes
Accepted
Does reimplementing GPLv2 code in another language create a derivative work that also falls under the GPL?
Yes. A derivative is a derivative. Porting existing code to another language also counts as making a modification.
NOT a derivative is a so-called blackbox implementation. That is the case when you ...
- 11.5k
13
votes
Accepted
Is the Maximum Use License for Everybody (MULE) a FOSS license?
Forbidding sale of the software has precedent in OSI-approved licenses, for example SIL-OFL 1.1 says:
Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or Modified ...
- 39.3k
13
votes
Accepted
Why does the clause 3 of 4-clause BSD makes it incompatible with GPL?
The GPL does not normally require licence holders to put any special acknowledgments in their advertising material. GPLv3 s7 says that any of six additional restrictions may be added to the normal ...
- 51.1k
13
votes
Accepted
Can GPLv2 licensed software be re-published under LGPLv2.1?
I do not think you are reading the compatibility table correctly. When I look at the intersection of I want to copy code under GPLv2 and I want to licence my code under LGPLv2.1 I see a box that says ...
- 51.1k
13
votes
Accepted
Splitting LGPL License into certain folders/files
As this seems to be a common misconception: how you lay out your files in a filesystem or repository fundamentally has no bearing on their licensing. Assuming you are the copyright holder, you can ...
- 20.7k
13
votes
Am I allowed to link code licensed under GPL to proprietary libraries?
GPL allows you to create derived works from GPL licensed works. If you don’t distribute your derived work, then GPL puts no obligations on you, so doing this is fine.
Now if you want to distribute ...
- 1,419
11
votes
Accepted
How to retain complete copyright on a GitHub open source project
The three freedoms you say you want to give (totally open for view, totally open for editing/contributing, free to use/free to download) are not contentious, so I'll focus on the restrictions you want ...
- 51.1k
11
votes
Accepted
What happens if I stop using a GPL library?
This depends on who you accepted contributions from while the code is under the GPL license.
If you didn't accept contributions from others and you are the sole copyright holder, then you can change ...
- 32.1k
11
votes
If I change the license of my project, can someone use the old license by navigating through Git history?
if the LICENSE file is added in a single commit, then git rebase -i is an easy way to remove it.
git rebase -i <root commit> will give you a list of all commits after the first one in an editor....
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