Quoting Simon Hobson (linux@???):

> Sorry, I wasn't clear.
>
> As you allude to later, if ExampleCo have got contributors to assign
> copyright to them, then they (ExampleCo) are free to change the
> licensing terms as they wish - delete all historical "free" stuff* and
> make it a closed and proprietary package. Basically taking other's
> work for nothing and profiting nicely from it. They can be helped in
> that if people blindly just keep the source on a public repository
> under ExampleCo's control. On the other hand, if the individual
> contributors have retained their own copyright, then any one of them
> can go to court and (for example) seek relief of stopping any further
> distribution of their code until licence terms are complied with. Thus
> ExampleCo can't profit from having a closed system to sell without
> either persuading every contributor to agree, or spending the
> development effort of ripping out all that code and replacing with
> their own.
>
> So they can still sell a closed system - but their ability to make a
> profit is somewhat constrained by there being a) a free version still
> around (hopefully*), and b) having to spend potentially large
> quantities of developer time stripping out all the "free" stuff they
> don't have the copyright for.

Yes, you of course have the right of that. Not for your benefit (as I'm
sure you know this), but in case anyone else is in doubt on this point,
nobody objects to a firm making a profit from open source / free
software. Indeed, the ability to use code in commerce is one of the
core principles of open source (OSD clause #6, no discrimination against
fields of endeavour).

The only thing (in this area) open source averts is profiting from
proprietary advantage.


> The main point being that they can't just take stuff for free and make
> a closed system with it - thus side-stepping the costs normally
> associated with it. At least with the GPL licence.

They're welcome to do so with open source code under any non-copyleft
(aka non-reciprocal, aka academic, aka permissive) licence, such as the
BSD Licence family, MIT X11 Licence, Apache Licence, others. Proponents
of those licences often assert that proprietary forks of non-copyleft
works usually don't persist because of the high ongoing cost of
maintenance. They have a good point, IMO.

> Thanks for that information. It's stuff that I sort of knew about, but
> didn't know the details. Once again, a wordy reply, but words of
> value.

I accidentally snipped my footnote, last time. I was something like
this:

[1] Apologies for the Yank-ism of construing companies as singular in
this post. I'm afraid I'm incurably heterodox, my usage crossing the
Atlantic depending on whom I've been talking to or reading.

-- 
Cheers,           Day 4278 of my caffeine LD50 field test experiment.  Eyeballs
Rick Moen         are vibrating.  Can hear colors.  Caught a hummingbird.
rick@???                             -- Matt Watson (@biorhythmist)
McQ! (4x80)