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Re: GPL Liscensing on New Release: What Gives?
> As an aside, this is different from what the FSF requires developers
> of GNU projects to do: they require those developers to assign their
> copyright to the FSF, preventing them from doing what I just described.
This is getting somewhat far afield from the oskit's licensing issues.
But to correct Godmar a little: the FSF asks authors to sign a copyright
assignment contract transferring copyright ownership to the FSF; this
contract includes the following clause:
Upon thirty days' prior written notice, the Foundation agrees to grant me
non-exclusive rights to use the Program as I see fit; (and the Foundation's
rights shall otherwise continue unchanged).
This is part of a binding contract made between the author and the Free
Software Foundation. So the author can use the code he contributed later
in whatever ways he chooses, free or not; he just cannot revoke the FSF's
right to distribute the original code to others under a free license.
In short, the copyright assignment contracts the FSF uses are meant to
legally ensure the FSF's clear legal right to distribute the code under a
GPL-like license in perpetuity, not to restrict the author's rights to
distribute the same code under other license.
References: