Re: [TCLUG:17728] Motif has gone opensource!

["Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy@veldy.net>]

>
> Well, if you are the original author, you can re-license whatever you
> wrote, although you usually have to make a new version and can't
> retroactively re-license.  So, you could release version 0.9 of a
> program under the GPL, then tweak some things and release version 1.0
> under a different license.  Of course, the 0.9 version remains GPLed,
> and anyone can use that as a code base.

No.  If you modify GPL code [and then version it], it still falls under the
GPL.  You MUST publish the sources (or diffs) if you distribute the binary
code.  Thus - a company like Microsoft would refuse to use it.  BSD on the
otherhand - you can do exactly what you said.  The original BSD licensed
code must remain public - but the modified code does not have to.

>
> The Free Software Foundation recommends changing copyright ownership to
> the FSF instead of any individual for just this reason (though it's
> conceivable that the FSF could, in a particularly twisted move, change
> all the software that is `owned' by them to be under something other
> than the GPL).

FSF can't take it and change the license after it is GPL.  You can still
hold the copyright, but once GPL'd, you loose the right to keep others from
using and modifying it.  Although they can't take it and make it commercial
without the source code remaining public like all GPL'd software.

Rather - they can add licensing, but not change it - but GPL will still be
there - and thus you will still have all the rights and restrictions of GPL
regaurdless of any other license they add to the code.

If they could - why would anybody do what they recommend?  Essentially, it
would be BSD licensing than.

>
> Then there are the particularly weird people, like the developers of
> ReiserFS, that use a dual GPL/commercial license -- totally screwy,
> IMHO.
>

I am not sure how that works - unless they are saying which license is being
used based upon the end-user usage
(i.e. commercial or private or educational).

Tom Veldhouse
veldy@veldy.net