[Foundation-l] Re: A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

[Delirium]

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