At 7:26 PM -0700 26/5/03, Phil Nelson wrote:
Nope, the original authors can do so too.
It depends on who owns the copyright, FSF or the original authors. In many cases the author assigned copyright to the FSF and than can no longer change the license unless they send a formal letter to the FSF asking for their own copy of the software or document to do with as they see fit. And FSF still owns the copyright on the FSF copy.
This was discussed a while back and I just wanted to give a summary of my experiences.
First, I was given an assignment license from the FSF that would assign my rights to the FSF, but then they would grant back rights to me to do as I wish with my changes. As such, I would be able to release the changes under a different license (more or less restrictive) as I chose.
However I declined to sign this as it had some further requirements that put potential work on me in the future (namely, I might be required to do things to implement the spirit of the agreement, make reports to the FSF, plus agreements to take on the FSF's liability in any changes to the code). I see no reason that I should sign such an agreement, putting potential extra risk or limits on myself in order to allow the FSF more freedom to prosecute people for breaches of the GNU license.
After that, I learned of the public domain license they had instead, and got a copy of that. Put simply, it allowed me to simply disclaim all copyright interests in my changes and affirm that I have no other IP interests and wont undermine the program in the future, and that the changes are my own work. Since I'm happy to place my changes to GPC in the public domain, this was fine by me and I've signed this and sent it back to them. Since I've disclaimed my copyrights to my changes, no one owns them and anyone can do anything they want with them, including me under a different license if I feel so inclined.
Enjoy, Peter.