On Mon, 24 Mar 2003, Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
Another related issue ... when developers contribute code to foobar, do they hand over their rights to the copyright holder for foobar?
They do, but they also have the choice of retaining copyright on their code. In general, if all you've given is a few minor patches to existing source, then you give up your copyright. If you contribute an entire source file - you may choose to retain copyright.
The original copyright holders have the right to change the license terms on their work at any time. I assume this cannot have a retrospective effect on the copies that have already been licensed under the GPL. But what happens to all the contributions from other developers? If foobar suddenly becomes propietary, does that mean all the code in foobar can now be used for commercial purposes although it
Yes. See sourceforge. However, they must own the copyright on all the code in order to change the licence. See also how sleepycat operates.
Philip