Re:MongoDB switches up its open source license
by Uehreka on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @10:36AM
(#18229700)
IANAL, but I believe in this case a maintainer can just fork MongoDB from right before they changed the license, then new contributors can just contribute to that forked repo, creating an off brand “Non-goDB” that will get a lot of the updates that people want. This would fracture the development of the project and would be bad for everyone, but at least the open source community wouldn’t completely lose the project.
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Re:MongoDB switches up its open source license
by greenshackle2 on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @11:22AM
(#18230092)
IANAL either but just to be pedantic, in theory I don't see what stops them from no longer distributing old versions under AGPLv3. Having distributed it at one point under GPL doesn't force them to continue doing so forever.
Of course that would be pointless as anyone who forked before the license change could continue re-distributing under AGPLv3.