On Tue, 1 Jun 2021, Christopher Dimech wrote: > > It is a real problem. As I recall a while ago parts of QEMU had to be > > removed and reimplemented from scratch when the project switched licences, > > because a contributor and therefore a copyright holder (whom I knew in > > person and who I am sure would make no fuss about it) has since passed > > away. > > That assumes that one wants to use the original developer version. But if a > maintainer > wants to include and support that piece of code for some particular reason, > he should be > able to do it. A free software license should not stop us from using the > code, whether he > died or not. Indeed the licensing is there to avoid such problems. It is > also legally > enforceable. It was one of wy arguments in favour.
You can use and modify original code under the terms of the original licence (provided it permitted it), but you cannot change the licence, because you are not a copyright holder for that piece of code. Maciej
