Changing an open source licence.

Question

I have been considering suggesting to my managers that certain software (and material) that we have developed in house could be released as Open Source. Convincing management types to give away our stuff for free is a little hard, however, it might be looked upon more favourably if there's an "exit clause", if you like.

Is it possible to change the licence for something back from open source? Can something be released under a licence only for a certain period of time (ie: this is GPL at least for 12 months, and will be reviewed afterwards)? As you can probably tell, I'm very sketchy on these things.

Answer 1

As the authors of something, you can release code under whatever license you want. If you later "revoke" the license, it cannot be applied retroactively. So any code already released under, say, GPL cannot be un-GPL'd. If a third party has that code then they are free to keep using, modifying and distributing it as GPL software. New versions written by your organisation can of course be under any license you like.

IANAL and you should probably ask for legal advice if your livelihood depends on this.

Answer 2

You can't un-ring a bell. Once the code is released you can't ask people to return it (or remove it from their systems). Besides, you have no way of auditing who has the code or where they may have stored it. As others have noted, your main "out" is that neither you nor your company is under any further obligation to continue to relesae new versions, upgrades, or ports in open source form.

As someone who has been involved in commercial open source development for quite some time I can tell you that the best way to get your manager to agree to releasing code in open source form is to make a business case for it. How will releasing your product in open source form improve the fortunes of your company? Will it draw sales of other revenue generating products? Will it entice people to your website? Will it cause your competitor(s) grief? If you can show that there is an advantage for your company in terms of direct or indirect revenue or some other relevant metric then your manager will likely give you permission. If he does give you permission you are not entirely off the hook yet. After the open source code is released you must gather statistics to show that your strategy is working -- i.e. more eyeballs are viewing your website, or more orders are hitting the books. If those numbers are favorable, then when it's time to release 2.0 your mananger will no doubt help you improve or expand your open source program.

Answer 3

Depending on the nature of your product, dual licensing might be a good solution. Otherwise, see the answers already given.

Answer 4

If you've released something under a licence that allows people to redistribute the code/software like most open source licences do then you can't revoke that right. You might be able to create your own licence that gives you the right to un-oss the software when you want to but that wouldn't be an open source licence.

Depending on the license you do have the possibility to make future versions of your software not open source. That means people are still free to distribute and develop your software based on your older versions but not on your newer versions. So called 'viral' licences like GNU make this more difficult because they state that everything based on the software should be released under the same licence. I think there are legal loopholes here to make dual licensing possible here though.

Answer 5

As others have noted this is certainly one to get legal advice on. It seems to me, though, that you could not do what you wish under one of the standard open source licenses. What you could do (working with a real lawyer who knows this area), is create your own license that reserved the rights that your company wants to keep. Those limitations would then be part of the "deal" with anyone who received the code.

The question of course is would you want to do that, and would anyone be interested in taking and using/relying on that code? First, you'd be further proliferating licenses which (for reasons I've never completely understood) is frowned upon. Second, the rights that would result would certainly fall short of true open source status.

I think the better course is to argue the other values/reasons why people open source, rather than creating an "exit clause" that leaves you without the benefits of proprietary and without the benefits of open source.

Answer 6

You could change your mind -- ie. stop releasing something under the GPL, but you can't remove the GPL from existing copies out there, or prevent people from distributing all your GPL'd code.

Answer 7

When Netscape shared their code they put it under a dual NPL/MPL license which essentially meant that Netscape could redistribute and sell MPL modifications under whatever terms they wanted.

Funny enough it's also what allowed Mozilla to relicense their code as MPL/GPL/LGPL as they (Mozilla) inherited the rights of NPL. I'm convinced you can't actually take away a license though as that would have prompted open source scams where people unlicense their code as open source and start asking money for it long ago.

IANAL though.

Answer 8

To expand on the other answers: the perpetual nature of a licence is generally written into that licence, as opposed to coming from law. Perpetuity is generally regarded as a requirement for a licence to be considered an open source licence.