[aur-general] AUR & Copyright

[Peter Lewis]

On Monday 07 February 2011 17:46:08 Bernardo Barros wrote:
> 2011/2/7 Yaro Kasear <yaro at marupa.net>:
> > Sure you can change licenses if you own (Hold copyright to.) all the
> > relevant code involved.
> 
> That's way OT, but I'm curious now... :-).
> 
> Then if I did a BSD code that a company used in their proprietary
> code, and then I change it to GPL, what happens then? The company will
> have to open their derivative code too?

No. The version that you last released under the BSD licence would still be 
available under the BSD licence. You can't change this retroactively.

If you later added code to it under the GPL and (were therefore required to) 
switch the whole program to GPL (due to the relationship between the BSD and 
GPL licences) then anyone basing their work off (and releasing of course) the 
versions after the last BSD licence would be required to make their subsequent 
derivatives and linked code GPL too.

> What I see is people releasing prior proprietary code unde GPL, but
> not from BSD to GPL.

BSD code can be merged into GPL code if the whole thing becomes GPL, but the 
reverse is not true. (This is often why GPL Linux has better hardware drivers 
than BSD.)

HTH,

Pete.