[openbeos] Re: some notes about the license

Niels Reedijk wrote:

> Matthijs Hollemans:
>  > By the way, if you want to change the license,
> > you can always fork the project and add your
> > restrictions. (Heh heh.)
>
> Actually, only the copyright holder can change
> the license of the file he 'owns'.

This is not entirely true. You can add additional license terms to a
license, provided that they do not conflict with the original
license terms. The MIT license can be converted into a GPL license,
for example, or even into a proprietary license. But this is only
possible because the MIT license specifically allows for this.

The other way around is not allowed: you cannot take a piece of
GPL'ed code and re-license it as MIT, because the original license
(GPL) is more restrictive. Nor can you take an MIT licensed file and
distribute it as "public domain", for the same reason.

So a license _can_ be "changed" (or extended would be a better
term), even if you are not the original creator/copyright holder of
the work. The extent to which you can change it varies from license
to license.

Matthijs

Other related posts: