Precisely so.

As schweini suggested, this would effectively result in a "fork", where one development version becomes proprietary and the other remains FLOSS. This is basically the only way for someone to get a closed-source version of Linux into existence: get a separate licensing deal from all relevant copyright holders.

Even so, they'd then end up with just another copy that they could take in different directions without contributing back to the FLOSS pool. There would be no revocation of FLOSS licensing outside the terms of the license itself (in the case of the Linux kernel, the GPL). The same sort of rule applies to FLOSS-licensed Perl modules: once released, it's in the wild. One could conceivably "buy" the rights to it, but could not then terminate the previously existing licenses, and thus the free version would remain.

disclaimer: I am not a scourge of mankind lawyer.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
 - apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

In reply to Re^2: pondering on potential copyright issues by apotheon
in thread pondering on potential copyright issues by schweini

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