Path: csiph.com!aioe.org!LeVffQP25j5GAigzc2gaQA.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail From: =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Any software law experts? Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2022 14:50:02 -0500 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <619582eb-1eb4-4198-9858-eb8992822103n@googlegroups.com> <969410dc-6fba-4361-82ff-b4b2979fe6fbn@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="9700"; posting-host="LeVffQP25j5GAigzc2gaQA.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org"; User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.4.2 Content-Language: en-US X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:39848 On 11/9/2022 2:42 PM, e.d.pro...@gmail.com wrote: > On Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 2:34:18 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote: >> If you write some brilliant software, then you can >> sell it to me on commercial terms for 100 dollars >> and give it to your neighbor on an open source license. >> >> That open source license gives your neighbor the right >> to give his brother a copy under the same license. >> But because he does not own copyright, then he >> can not pass it on under another license. That >> privilege would be yours as copyright owner. > I see, so them publishing their software with a license doesn't mean that software is tied to that license. Correct. The copyright owner can issue whatever license he/she wants. Some open source projects require contributors to sign over copyright to the project. That makes it a lot easier to change the open source license for the project. Instead of having every contributor to agree on relicensing then the project can do it. > So if you get itext for free, you use the latest version under the > AGPL license. If you pay for it, you get some other custom license > that says you can use the code in closed source, and can't share it > with anyone else, and have to keep paying annually to renew. I assume that would be a standard commercial license like the one you get when you buy MS Office from Microsoft or Oracle DB from Oracle. Arne