Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
changing the license of a running project is difficult, but not that much.
I'm skeptical about this claim, as I think it's much easier said than done.
Does anyone know of collaborative projects that have actually switched licenses entirely, even in the software world?
The only case I have any familiarity with is Nupedia, which I understand changed from its homegrown license to the GFDL shortly before Wikipedia was created (thus putting us in the licensing position we are now). Since I believe all copyrights were assigned to Bomis, this was a rather simple proposition, as a single copyright holder can just go ahead and release the content under a different license. Changing licenses when multiple parties are involved would be much more complex.
--Michael Snow
I'm skeptical about this claim, as I think it's much easier said than done.
Does anyone know of collaborative projects that have actually switched licenses entirely, even in the software world?
The only case I have any familiarity with is Nupedia, which I understand changed from its homegrown license to the GFDL shortly before Wikipedia was created (thus putting us in the licensing position we are now). Since I believe all copyrights were assigned to Bomis, this was a rather simple proposition, as a single copyright holder can just go ahead and release the content under a different license. Changing licenses when multiple parties are involved would be much more complex.
Once again, I don't think that it is that difficult... it is possible to use dual-licensing and other solutions... but it would be quite long...
Michael Snow wrote:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
changing the license of a running project is difficult, but not that much.
I'm skeptical about this claim, as I think it's much easier said than done.
Does anyone know of collaborative projects that have actually switched licenses entirely, even in the software world?
Mozilla did, and it was a huge project with thousands of contributors. They basically started emailing people asking for permission to do the change, raised some publicity so hopefully some people they couldn't find email addresses for would become aware of the change, and then started replacing/rewriting code from people who they couldn't contact or who didn't give permission.
For more, see their relicensing FAQ: http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html
-Mark
Michael Snow wrote:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
changing the license of a running project is difficult, but not that much.
I'm skeptical about this claim, as I think it's much easier said than done.
One way that I can see is that the GNU FDL says that it allows redistribution "under this same version of the GNU FDL or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation" (paraphrased). As far as I'm aware, the FSF already recognises our difficult position. I think it would be only fair if they added something to the next version of the FDL allowing large-scale projects such as Wikipedia et al. to switch to a licence of their own, provided that this own licence fulfills certain criteria that make it "free".
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