Please note that I do not want to argue about the moral aspect of this question. I know that there are probably many different concerns.I have been researching for a special license that could be used in a following scenario, but with no success:Let's assume I have a software and want to release its source code, so that others can use it too. Since I don't want others to make changes and keep them closed I could the GPL. But here's the thing: Even if I profit from changes that other people do. I can relicense only my code because I'm not holding the copyrigth any code that not made by me. But I would like to.I want to know if there is a ready-to-use license that will grant me (the initial author) the rigth to relicense any changes or code that was added by others. Or in even shorter terms: A GPL that does not count for me.If you are interessted why I need this: I don't know if I will ever use my software for a commercial product. Probably not, but if I just use the GPL, I migth end up in a situation where I can't remove any other code since there are to many committers.
License that grants the initial author all rights of derived/modified work?
licensing;legal;free software
It sounds like you need a license which requires any downstream changes to be submitted back to you. I don't know of any that include this clause, you may need to have a lawyer write a custom license for you.Open source projects that accept contributions from other developers oftentimes have the developers sign contributor agreements in which the developers either assign their copyright to the project owner, or grant the project owner a full-rights license. This frees the project owner to do whatever they need to with the developer contributions, without worrying about copyright and without worrying about getting permission after the fact.You can generate your own contributor agreements at this site: http://www.harmonyagreements.org/