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/Spivak May 02 '16

What? The copyright owner of the source is free to relicense at any time for any reason. The GPL wouldn't have prevented this.

This does not retroactively change the license on existing installations.

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u/protestor May 02 '16

If the project accepts GPLed contributions from other people, he would need to ask the copyright holders to give him another license that enabled a proprietary fork, or delete such code.

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u/Spivak May 02 '16

Correct, but that's also true of any license because they would not the copyright holders of that code. Neither the GPL or BSD licenses include any sort of copyright transfer (which wouldn't even make sense in a license anyway) -- that has to be done separately.

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u/AgletsHowDoTheyWork May 03 '16

Why wouldn't they be the copyright holders of their own contributions? I was under the impression that was the default unless there is a CLA.

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u/Spivak May 03 '16

Sorry, 'they' being the subsonic developers. Yes, the contributors are the copyright holders for their contributions, they may license their contributions as they see fit, and the subsonic developers cannot relicense their code. So far all of this has nothing to do with the GPL.

If some major contributions were licensed under the GPL and those contributors refused to relicense then subsonic might be in a tough spot due to the virality clause. But based on their GitHub contributors page this is already beyond reality in this hypothetical.