Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> writes:
> > Looks interesting, I'll take a look at it. I assume I can change
> > licenses with later releases if I want...the code is mine, right?
> 
> I don't know.  I've seen it done, but I've seen people argue that even the
> creator is bound by the license.

IANAL, but if you are the only contributor to the code base, it's all
under your copyright. So when you do a new release, you're free to
choose another license.

What you can't do is to change the license of an old release, like
this:

  1. Release foobar-0.1 under GNU GPL (thus making it free for all).

  2. Develop foobar-0.2 and release it with some evil proprietary
     license which prohibits people from copying/modifying foobar.

  3. Demand that all use of foobar-0.1 comply with the new license.

As long as you're only doing 1 & 2 there's no problem (well, depending
on your point of view there might be some moral problems, and people
are likely to complain...), but you can't legally do 3.

> My guess is that if you do change licenses, nobody's going to bother
> to do anything about it. If they have a problem, they'll use an
> earlier version that has a license that they like.

I think so too. Though I also think that changing license to something
more prohibitive is going to make some people angry.


My suggestion for licensing is: don't make up a new one yourself,
since a) you would probably need lawyer help to ensure it is good
enough, b) the world already has enough licenses. :-)

Else, I would suggest GNU GPL because choosing that makes it possible to
share code with the rest of the GNU world and avoid license wars with
various parties (that's the pragmatic reason, anyway). And then you
don't have to worry that someone will steal your code and abuse it in
some future commercial product.

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://sunsite.dk/olau/

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