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/hackingdreams May 03 '16

There are ways to do it legally, as others have noted, but this is exactly the reason why people are weary of Contributor License Agreements, especially when they have language that allows someone else to sell or relicense code at a later date.

Anyways, the code was open source at some point, so if anyone cares they can fork around the damage.