[Fedora-legal-list] Re: concerning who can change code licence

[Miroslav Suchý]

Dne 31. 01. 22 v 12:42 Germano Massullo napsal(a):
>  My personal opinion is that only THE author must be the one allowed to change the licence
> of his own code, not another 
>  person.
>
>  Is that correct?
>  
It is the **holder** of the rights. As non-native speaker I am not sure I am using
the right term, so I will describe.

I am employee of Red Hat. When I write a code then I am the author. The authorship cannot
be transfered. But at the same 
time I am owner of the rights and that can be transfered. In my case, in my employee
contract is written that the rights 
for the work related to my employement goes to Red Hat and Red Hat is the holder of the
rights. They can decide what to 
do: release it under any license, sell it, close it, ... and they re-license.

When you contribute to a project you may agree (not neccessery sign) Contributor Agreement
(e.g., [1] in case of Fedora) 
which may give some rights to the project owner.

Sometime the change of license can be easy and project owner can do it. But sometimes it
can be tricky as in case of OSM 
re-license [2] where every single contributor had to agree with license change.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Fedora_Project_Contributor_Agreement

[2] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/tag/license-change/

Miroslav