• Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    It’s been established that you can’t call backsies on open sourcing your software.

    They could make new updates to lemmy proprietary, but what’s out there is already out there.

    • patatahooligan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      They could make new updates to lemmy proprietary

      Maybe not even that. Lemmy is released under the AGPL3. This means that modified versions of Lemmy have to also be released as free software under the AGPL3 or a compatible license. To release a derivative work under an incompatible license you would need to own the code or be given permission by each contributor to do so. For any contribution where you can’t make a deal with the author, you would have to rip it out of the codebase entirely. Note that this is true for lemmy devs as well. If there is no Contributor License Agreement that states otherwise, they cannot distribute the work of other contributors under an AGPL3-incompatible license.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Right, I was thinking the “collective authors”; and to be fair, a small contribution could be replaced if tracked properly. If there’s no CLA and there are a lot of significant contributions by various individuals you’re absolutely right that it becomes impractical to the point that it wouldn’t happen.