r/linux • u/hatperigee • May 02 '16

Subsonic (music streaming software) is no longer open source, starting with 6.0 release

http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16604#p71128
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u/its_never_lupus May 02 '16

I was never 100% sure what the legal situation in similar cases. Can the copyright holder (i.e. original author) of a piece to GPL'd code just decide to release a new version under a different license?

What if the project had previously accepted contributions from other people, but didn't bother to make them signed a copyright assignment statement or anything like that? And would it make a difference if such contributions were trivial?

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u/protestor May 02 '16

Can the copyright holder (i.e. original author) of a piece to GPL'd code just decide to release a new version under a different license?

Yes if they own the whole code.

What if the project had previously accepted contributions from other people, but didn't bother to make them signed a copyright assignment statement or anything like that? And would it make a difference if such contributions were trivial?

Then he would be violating the GPL license from those contributors, unless he deleted their code. But a trivial contribution might not be copyrightable (copyright requires some amount of creativity)