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Comment by kissgyorgy | Hacker News Reader

The title might be a bit misleading. Released code can't not be open source anymore, only future development.

I think most understand the idea that a project can change its license at any point, but that doesn't apply to previous version. (In this case, any version prior to 5.1.0)

> Released code can't not be open source anymore...

It can be. You can release under a "source available" license barring it from being used (even compiled), derived, incorporated into other works, making it basically "for eyes only, or we sue you to oblivion".

Many people consider licenses as window decorations, but they are not.

Parent poster is saying that the already-released versions, which were released under an open source license, are still open source.

Yes you can't retroactively change licenses, but it's also important to know that just because you can read a source file, the file in question is bona-fide open source or free software.

Many people lack this knowledge from my experience.

We had a Windows CE dev license back in the Cambrian Era which included visibility of the source tree, but God help you if you tried to change it and make your own build.

Solely being able to view source code without other rights absolutely doesn’t make it open source. In general if something isn’t under an open source license it isn’t.

ADDED Unless it’s public domain and then it effectively is.

Further distribution can be put under any license they want but any copy anyone received in the past that was Apache 2 licensed remains such and can be used as before.

So if anyone wants to put a past release online they are free to do so (unless there are parts of the code that were restricted before).

It would be prudent to remove branding where possible but that's mainly a precaution.

Well licenses are window decorations when it comes to personal use.

Well, no.

Personal use doesn't free you the obligations GPL brings, for example.

Assuming you or a company doesn’t redistribute it, copyleft doesn't matter.

> doesn’t redistribute it

Well sure, but that's a really big caveat.

I would assume personal use doesn’t involve redistribution. Probably true for most company software for internal use as well.

Does this vary by jurisdiction maybe?

nope. If something in jurisdiction would make license invalid that would not mean you can do what you want with the code, that would mean that you can't use that license.

If a jurisdiction releases you but does not prevent you from performing an obligation, licences do not typically consider that a reason for invalidation of the licence.

If the code was under a restrictive source-available license, it wasn't open source...

I think most people don't consider viewable source projects to be truly open source

"no longer" suggests it was, but now isn't, which appears to match reality?

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