I'm working on a software project where so far I'm the sole developer. As of right now the code is unlicensed, but the copyright of whatever I've written belongs to me (this is true at least in North America AFAIK).Before I release the software to the public, I'm going to license its distribution, probably under something like MPL or GPL. Question 1: As the original copyright holder, does this effect me in anyway? Or do I still have unrestricted distribution rights?Question 2: After some time, more developers join the project. Now much of source code copyright belongs to me+contributors. How do distribution rights work for the authors now?Regards,kfl
Original author rights in a licensed software project
licensing;gpl
A lot of your confusion will go away if you keep in mind that copyright and licensing are two completely separate things.Copyright is owned by the original author.  (Unless it was produced under a work for hire contract, in which case it is owned by the employer. This most likely doesn't apply to your project.)  Copyright can be sold or otherwise transferred.Licensing is the copyright owner giving other people the permission to use their work in specific ways, under specific conditions.  Distribution of a work under a license does not transfer copyright rights. (Unless the license specifies that it does, of course, but no open-source license I know of does this.)This has two important implications for open-source projects:If you license your own code, that you hold the copyright to, under an open-source license, there is nothing stopping you from licensing it to someone else under completely different terms, because you still hold the copyright.If you are running an open-source project with multiple contributors, you do not own the copyright to work that other people have submitted, unless they explicitly transferred copyright to you.  Since you don't own the copyright on the entire project, you do not have the right to distribute the entire project under an alternate license unless you've made sure to get permission to do so from every contributor.If you're worried about this, the best way to take care of this is to make sure that every contributor agrees to allow you to manage licensing before you merge any of their contributions into the main project.