They can still do this if the old code base is under a permissive license, since permissive licenses like BSD, Apache and MIT are compatible with proprietary licenses.
I think you are confusing re-licensing with sub-licensing, which are not the same. Under copyright law, the copyright holder is granted certain exclusive rights over their work and re-licensing is one of the rights. If the license grants sub-licensing, a licensee can pass on some or all of the rights in the license to a third party. Of the three licenses you mentioned, only the MIT license allows sub-licensing.
The license terms for a sub-license must be consistent with the original license terms, although not necessarily the same. The sub-licensor can use different words as in the original license, but they cannot override the terms and conditions that are required by that license. The sub-licensor cannot sub-license more rights than have been granted by the original license.
Works released under the Apache, BSD, and MIT license can be included in a larger work with a more restrictive license or modifications can be put under such a restrictive license, but the original license must remain intact.
If you are getting your information on re-licensing from the Wikipedia page below, it is wrong.
Mostly true, but only up to an extent: without a CLA, they can't just update LICENSE.txt to replace the contents with the text of the new license and be on their merry way without any trace of the old one.
They can't hide the fact that it was once MIT/BSD/Apache licensed, and they still have to include copies of that original license (and any notices) even after the switch, as that is one of the conditions that contributors make their work available under, and failure to do so would mean the org is in violation if they haven't otherwise received approval.
Even if one has to include the original license and notices with the new version, the original license and notices apply to the portions which were present in the older versions. The new portions added to the software after the license change must be used only as per the new license. MIT, BSD and Apache licenses don't forbid you to use a new license to your own derivative work.
Everything you just wrote is true, but it's not clear why you felt the need to spell it out, especially right here. (No one has said otherwise. No one has said anything that could be mistaken to mean otherwise.)
I occasionally did check up on stories, but people rarely do follow-up reporting (especially for things that don't pan out), and Google searches usually just turn up 50 variations on the original story written from the original press release. It's a very unfortunate dynamic.
One thing that might be important to note about this: to the extent that pip is a client for PyPI, a strategy of freezing the last supported version of pip indefinitely may not work. It will presumably always be able to install Python 2 wheels from a local wheelhouse, but it's worth being prepared for a future where `python2 -m pip install <x>` stops working.
FYI, some of the sites on there that bill themselves (or have billed themselves) as "public domain" actually use proprietary licenses that are not compatible with public domain declarations. I find it very frustrating that "public domain photos" turns up unsplash, pexels, pixabay and a bunch of other sites that have licenses with terms like, "cannot be used to make the model look bad" and "cannot be used to create a competitor to our site".
For many use cases, these licenses are perfectly fine, but they aren't compatible with actual CC-0 declarations (or even CC-BY), so if you are trying to create permissively licensed derivatives, you must avoid them. It may be worth marking those ones with an asterisk or something to avoid misunderstandings.
yeah i hear you. not something i have bandwidth to track right now, but i would accept a PR to add disclaimers (could turn the whole thing into a table form).
i agree your concern is impt, its just not the level at which i operate this list right now
This says it's under "creative commons" license, but there are many creative commons licenses and the link just goes to creativecommons.org . I'm guessing you meant to use CC-BY, CC-0 or CC-BY-SA?
Sounds like it will be CC-0 when the license is sorted out, which is awesome! If true, advertising that these are public domain will probably be an even stronger selling point!
CC-BY-SA is not "free for commercial" use. CC-BY would be.
Whether you choose CC-BY or CC-BY-SA is up to you but the title says "free for commercial use" which CC-BY-SA is not or at least not for the use cases shown.
If you really mean the share-alike part, i.e. that when you modify the image then anyone is free to use your derived version under the same terms, and you actually object to that clause, then I'm sorry but that's just stealing the author's free work without sharing whatever small edits you made back.
* incorrect, Non-Commercial is still an available variant of CC also in version 4.0, see u/quadrangle's comment below.
Oh, I thought I remembered them having dropped that because it was hard to define and actually reducing freedoms or something. Perhaps that was the FSF/OSI standpoint instead (though GPL never had it, so idk where this idea came from). I stand corrected about it being "previous" :)
There was a strong advocacy push for dropping NC or at least renaming it CRR (commercial rights reserved) to be clearer. But CC decided that dropping it for v4 would likely just lead to people continuing to use the v3. And if they use NC anyway, better to at least have the updated legal language than the outdated version.
I don't think commercial use is incompatible with an SA license.
Maybe it depends on how you define commercial use but if you define it as "any activity in which you use a product or service for financial gain",
there would be no problem putting one of these images on a product and sell the product and still give the consumers the freedom to use the images under the same license.
Gregg is wrong. Thanks but no thanks Gregg, you are confusing people. CC-BY-SA allows free commercial use. It just means that if someone makes a derivative of the work, they also keep that derivative CC-BY-SA (which is good) rather than locking down the rights. But they can do commercial use without any limitations.
The use cases shown on the page https://www.pixeltrue.com/frontliner-heroes are all derivative works. BY-SA means you can sell the picture but as so as you add text it's now a new derivative work (like every example on the page)
This is all a bit confusing but it's starting to makes sense now.
What I actually want the license to be is CC-BY-SA - I think this mean that people shouldn't making money out of the illustrations e.g. putting it on a t-shirt and selling it, but rather using it in their commercial website/app.
That just means everyone you share your stuff with must share alike (what SA stands for) anything they choose to publicly publish that they’ve made out of your copylefted work (their derivative works), in the same way you shared it with them (as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ says: “ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original” — in this case CC-BY-SA).
That doesn’t mean they can’t sell it, it just means they can’t claim it as their own and refuse to let any one else make their own derivative works of it under the same terms they made theirs.
There's no license that lets people use it on a commercial website but not to sell it on a shirt.
The only way to have that situation is to keep it All Rights Reserved and make separate contracts with people for all uses. That would totally undermine your goals.
I think CC-BY-SA is what you want. People aren't likely to sell it on a shirt, and if they do, they still have to give you credit (that's the BY part), like on the shirt itself I'd think even. If you left off the -SA part, people could make new versions and make those versions restricted instead of sharing them under the same terms.
Don't listen to this guy, as far as I can tell the only purpose of wanting the share-alike clause gone (which doesn't prevent commercial usage; it literally says that on the page you linked above) is to take your images and sell them on something like shutterstock.
This is wrong because many uses of the work, like adding it on the front page your your site with some caption, is a derivative work. Putting it on a page by itself or printing on a t-shirt would not be derivative but using it as a logo with text would.
I assume you send a fragment and the receipt or something, otherwise you can smash your klein bottle into many fragments and the return policy becomes a bulk discount.
(Though this particular business seems low volume enough that you can probably easily deal with that problem so long as you don't have to scale it.)
To my surprise, I haven't found anyone breaking their bottle on purpose. (or on a porpose). One of the nicest things about running this micro-business is that, sooner or later, I'll meet most of the people who own a Klein bottle. The math & physics community is a wonderful place...
I’m not really part of the math and physics community, but I just wanted to say I’ve been delighted by everything I’ve ever seen that you’ve done. You make the world a more interesting and fun place.
It's both an honor and a joy to find myself a member of several impressive communities ... old-style hackers, math & physics jocks, people with solder-burns on their fingers, and left-coast techies.
One thing this doesn't address is how to build an audience anonymously. I have occasionally considered creating a pseudonymous blog, but I don't know how to acquire readers without leaking information about my existing social network. I feel like anonymous submissions to stuff like reddit and HN rarely get traction.
