[traverseda]

>if your code is open-sourced, and the community contributed: fixes, features, actual new products - what gives you the right to close it?

Typically you're not able to close source existing code, once it's open it's open. What you can do is make the changes going forward proprietary.

Depending on if you got a contributor-license-agreement you may not be able to close source the community contributions, but if the code was licensed under something non-viral like MIT or BSD you have as much right to close source it as literally anyone else does.

I guess I really don't understand the question. You have the rights as outlined in the license, people who contribute agree to those license terms.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

There's a legal vs moral distinction there. Legally, you can generally relicense (or add licenses, at least) on permissively-licensed code, or you can force the issue by requiring a CLA that just makes you the owner of everything. However, a person could reasonably argue that you still are morally in the wrong for taking something given to you for free and charging for it.

[traverseda]

Personally that's why if I'm going to contribute to open source I'm probably going to contribute to GPL/AGPL projects. I don't begrudge people who want to license their OSS code under something like the MIT or BSD licenses though.

I think that software developers are probably the kind of people who can know what deal their actually getting if anyone can.

[reaperman]

Getting GPLv2 Compliance From A Chinese Company- In Person! [0]

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ

Edit: NSFW (but still compliant with YouTube obscenity standards)

[remram]

> If you give me your recipe for chocolate cake, and I make a few changes to make it suit my tastes better, I have to give those changes to you and the community.

This is completely false. You can bake your cake with your secret recipe and eat it too.

If you give someone else your improved cake though, you have to give them the matching recipe.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I'm at work. Let me guess, this is on Naomi's channel :-)

[reaperman]

Of course! Didn’t realize it would prove so controversial here on HN. Figured most everyone would already be familiar with her shtick, especially in context of discussion on open source hardware. But I should remind myself these wouldn’t be eternally relevant controversies if it were possible to reach a consensus.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be hearing much more from her. Last week on twitter she mentioned that she'd been told that basically she's making the government look bad (being too honest about some problems) and to stop posting. Haven't seen anything from her since.

[traverseda]

The above is NSFW

[loup-vaillant]

On what grounds? The crop top? The denim shorts? The enhanced boobs?

Man, this discrimination is just disgusting.

[palata]

Unless you sign a CLA, if you contribute to a project, you own the copyright for your contribution. And the owner of the repo cannot re-license your contribution without you.

So the question is really whether you are fine contributing to a copyleft/permissive project.

On my end, as long as I keep my copyright (i.e. I don't have to sign a CLA), then that's fine for me. If anything, any contribution I make makes it harder for them to re-license their project :-).

[remram]

They can't re-license to any incompatible license. If the original was permissive, that leaves many options.

[goodpoint]

> If the original was permissive, that leaves many options

...especially the option of making everything proprietary.

[palata]

No. Say you release your project "Foo" as open source (permissive) on project-foo.com. I cannot come and ask you to remove the sources from project-foo.com, and go to everybody who downloaded the code and ask them to delete it.

The version of Foo that you released as open source will always be open source. Now I can make a copy of Foo, use it in my proprietary software Bar, and ship Bar to customers without sharing the sources of Foo (but I need to share the license; all permissive licenses that I know require attribution). Foo is still open source on project-foo.com, I just don't distribute it with Bar.

I can modify Foo, and ship it to customers as a proprietary library (with attribution). My changes to Foo will be proprietary, but project-foo.com will still exist and will still be open source.

Now you own the copyright of Foo, so you can decide to start shipping it (and all new versions) as proprietary. But you can't ask me to delete the fork I made from your open source version, foo-fork.com. So that one will still be open source.

[palata]

That leaves options that are compatible with the original license that the contributor agreed to.

Seems fair to me :-).

[remram]

For example, you can send your contribution to an MIT or BSD project and have it turn into a closed-source for-profit product.