Comment on Duckstation(one of the most popular PS1 Emulators) dev plans on eventually dropping Linux support due to Linux users, especially Arch Linux users.

• cole@lemdro.id ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  right but unless you sign a contributor licensing agreement when you contribute then the copyright owner can’t relicense code you contributed.

  so if you contribute to a GPL codebase it’s pretty legally perilous to try to unilaterally relicense code that isn’t “yours”.

  this is pretty nebulous territory anyways, but I’d argue it’s pretty unethical to relicense to a more restrictive license essentially “taking” the GPL code from contributors

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• AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is true, but it’s also true that the older gpl versions can’t be revoked.

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  • deaddigger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Well yes and no you can release them going forward under a new licence. If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement. Thats absolutly possible to do Revoking licenses is alot harder though and changing the lizens from a foss on to another is often confusing and business inapropiate. However it is legal.

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    • mobotsar@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Assuming newer versions are derived from code that was licensed GPL in the old version, the newer versions (which include new code) are also licensed GPL, whether the person writing the new code likes it or not.

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      • deaddigger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        No, this is plainly wrong. A license is a proclamation of the copyrightowner how others can use their material. The copywrite owner does not license their own work to themself, they can do whatever they want with their copyright

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• 9bananas@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  yes you can!

  …for new versions. not for already released ones.

  at least not with most common copyleft/open source licenses.

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  • VonReposti@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Only if you are the sole contributor or get a written consent from all contributors. GPL doesn’t hand over the copyright to the maintainer.

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    • BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Dolphin is the poster child example of changing licences properly. It was a painful job just getting in touch with all the long inactive devs.

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    • 9bananas@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      yes, correct, assuming a solo project!

      thank you for the correction.

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  • deaddigger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Well yes and no you can release them going forward under a new licence. If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement. Thats absolutly possible to do. Revoking licenses is alot harder though and changing the lizens from a foss on to another is often confusing and business inapropiate. However it is legal.

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    • 9bananas@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      yes and no:

      the copyright owner can do whatever they want, but they can’t really revoke a GPL license. that’s not really a thing.

      and the part about

      If you obtained your copy under the old license you can use it under the old license when you obtain a new copy you have a new license agreement.

      seems to me like you are implying that “use under the old license” means “run the program on my own machine”, but that’s not true, since GPL explicitly allows redistribution and modification.

      under a GPL license, you effectively give up control over your software voluntarily:

      The GNU General Public Licenses are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software.

      (highlighted the relevant portion for your convenience)

      this makes revoking the license effectively impossible.

      you could continue development under a different license, but that gets legally tricky very quickly.

      for example: all the code previously under GPL, stays under GPL. so if someone where to modify those parts of the code and redistribute it as a patch, you couldn’t legally do anything about that.

      which seems to be what the OOP claims the change to a CC-BY-NC-ND forbids, apparently misunderstanding, that this new license only applies to code added to the repo since the license change, not the code from before the license change.

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      • deaddigger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Thats not completly right at least under german law (and most likely also under us law).

        A license is basically a contract between you and the copyright owner. If the copyright owner changes the distribution of a piece of software to a new license you have a diffrent contract with them. So you have to hold up this new license. If you already had a license (in this case gpl) you can use this old contract, but you can not download a new copy delete what was added since the copyright change and use that under gpl. You would have to proof that you had the gpl license before or in this case that it got relicensed to you.

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• JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You’ll find the copyright owner is Sony.

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  • deaddigger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    So the original code wasnt gpl at all then

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