<story><title>ZeroMQ – Relicense from LGPL3 and exceptions to MPL 2.0</title><url>https://github.com/zeromq/libzmq/pull/4555</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sneak</author><text>* an organization that doesn’t believe in software freedoms&lt;p&gt;If you believe in software freedoms, then there will never be any reason to need to relicense, nor would you want to.&lt;p&gt;Free software is an ideology, like human rights.  You can’t use it only sometimes and be said to support it.</text></item><item><author>loeg</author><text>Conversely, as an organization, it makes sense to never accept changes without a CLA.</text></item><item><author>sneak</author><text>This is why you should never sign a CLA; it allows later relicensing of your work to nonfree licenses.&lt;p&gt;Linux doesn’t have a CLA, and it’s the most popular operating system in the world.</text></item><item><author>taway1237</author><text>They legally have to ask every contributor. The exception&amp;#x2F;loophole used by big companies (but also FSF for example) is that every contributor had to sign a CLA where they legally reassign ownership of their code to the project owner.</text></item><item><author>cobertos</author><text>Is it very common to contact _every_ maintainer and back out changes from ones who don&amp;#x27;t respond for license changes?&lt;p&gt;I feel like I&amp;#x27;ve heard of many larger companies doing relicenses on their open source without this kind of effort.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JoshuaRogers</author><text>&amp;gt; If you believe in software freedoms, then there will never be any reason to need to relicense, nor would you want to.&lt;p&gt;The Tivo-ization process of the 90s shows that while this might be frequently true, it isn’t without exception. From a practical standpoint, continuing to provide for user freedom would have been best accomplished (personal opinion) if many projects had been able to move to a more AGPL style license.</text></comment>
<story><title>ZeroMQ – Relicense from LGPL3 and exceptions to MPL 2.0</title><url>https://github.com/zeromq/libzmq/pull/4555</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sneak</author><text>* an organization that doesn’t believe in software freedoms&lt;p&gt;If you believe in software freedoms, then there will never be any reason to need to relicense, nor would you want to.&lt;p&gt;Free software is an ideology, like human rights.  You can’t use it only sometimes and be said to support it.</text></item><item><author>loeg</author><text>Conversely, as an organization, it makes sense to never accept changes without a CLA.</text></item><item><author>sneak</author><text>This is why you should never sign a CLA; it allows later relicensing of your work to nonfree licenses.&lt;p&gt;Linux doesn’t have a CLA, and it’s the most popular operating system in the world.</text></item><item><author>taway1237</author><text>They legally have to ask every contributor. The exception&amp;#x2F;loophole used by big companies (but also FSF for example) is that every contributor had to sign a CLA where they legally reassign ownership of their code to the project owner.</text></item><item><author>cobertos</author><text>Is it very common to contact _every_ maintainer and back out changes from ones who don&amp;#x27;t respond for license changes?&lt;p&gt;I feel like I&amp;#x27;ve heard of many larger companies doing relicenses on their open source without this kind of effort.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>loeg</author><text>Yeah. I think in your dichotomy, most of the world does not believe in software freedoms.</text></comment>