On Fri, 2002-11-15 at 13:33, Mahesh T Pai wrote:
Holder of the copyright (the original author) can of course, give the s/w to anybody under a different license. This is called dual licensing.
Newer versions may be released under non-GPL licenses. In this case, those who got copies under the GPL can continue to use, modify, and distribute the older parts, so long as they continue to distribute / release the sources.
The best examples of this is SourceForge. savannah.gnu.org runs the older, free version of the sourceforge colaborative development network software on its servers while VA continues to develop a non-free version of its Enterprise Edition on the older free version. I happen to work for a company which is developing the Source Forge Enterprise Edition for VA and I'm amazed to see how less important freedom means to these VA guys. One of the "top" people in VA is patient enough to remove all occurences of the string 'GNU/' from /etc/motd. Maybe it is his conscience that pricks him and prolly thats the reason why he did it. :D
-Suraj