Maybe I missed it but where in the article does it say Fly acquired Litestream?
EDIT: Ben Johnson says he just joined Fly. Nothing about Fly “acquiring” Litestream.
https://mobile.twitter.com/benbjohnson/status/15237489883352...
I'm honestly not sure whether we should change it or not - minimizing complaints is the goal - what's it called when a function has two points that it keeps unstably jumping between?
As far as I understood it, Fly.io hired the person working on Litestream and pays them to keep working on Litestream.
Ben Johnson confirms how you framed it here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/benbjohnson/status/15237489883352...
Does this mean that, in addition to offering a salary / options, you provided some sort of additional one-time compensation for copyright assignment?
So presumably no, there was not a one-time compensation for copyright assignment.
You do realize that this fact does not entitle you to the copyright of the work, right? It entitles you to use it, modify, redistribute, etc, with continued attribution of the copyright holders.
As such, copyright re-assignment is possible for any code that Ben wrote. And, any contributions are probably a grey area of sorts since there was probably no agreement of copyright assignment when contributing as there is in some projects. Any who.
1. I didn't say anything about changing the LICENSE, but it certainly would be possible to change the LICENSE. Typically, you need to get all the copyright holders to agree to it (e.g. all previous contributors), OR, move to a license that ensures all of the previous rights as well (e.g. a compatible license). Additionally, there's a moment when the LICENSE changes. Previous releases would be under the previous license and available indefinitely under those terms (assuming you have the source code at that version).
2. The LICENSE itself has provisions around use of the code. If you fail to adhere to the agreement, then, yes, you could be sued by the copyright holder. Effectively, for APLv2, here is a summary: https://tldrlegal.com/license/apache-license-2.0-%28apache-2...
3. What I did say is changing the _copyright holder_, e.g., the owner. This is the grantor of the LICENSE, who is providing the software / source code (typically gratis, but it doesn't have to be) provided you adhere by the rules stated in the LICENSE. APLv2.0 definitely doesn't give you the right to pretend you wrote the entire thing. In fact, if you redistribute the source code with modifications, the APLv2.0 requires that you include a statement of your significant changes.
My point was only – why would fly.io pay an appreciable sum to transfer the copyright of code already written when a FOSS license has already been applied to that code? Clearly that was a connection I was making in my head that I failed to write down in my comment.
My intention was not to be condescending, fwiw, so I am sorry for my failure there.
However, nothing is guarantied about the future license of the project. The rights holder could only release future versions under a proprietary license. Meaning buying rights assignment is buying the future of the project. Of course everyone forks and leaves if you get to draconian up front, so you have to slow boil that frog.
This does not require selling the copyright of existing code, nor does it seem to me like that sale would be beneficial for achieving the above.
? If you have a copy of the code in your hands, then the license that applies to your use of it is APLv2.
The owner of the rights can take the official public project repo private, and either never publish it again or change the license on the official repo to whatever they like.
It doesn't matter if the code used to be APLv2 if you didn't get a copy of it. If you don't have and want the code, and it is now available with N license, you either accept N license, find some unofficial copy of the APLv2 version, or you don't get access to the code.
Very bottom of the post. Technically, Litestream remains an open-source project, so it's more accurate to say that Fly.io acquired the brand IP and the owner of that IP.