The specific issue here is that he did "give it away," but not for free. He gave it away under the terms of the GPL as its license. If I give you something, but only under a particular agreement, and you break that agreement, then there are usually some form on consequences, no?
If he were really giving it away for free with no strings attached, then he would have used something like a CC license, which was specifically designed for that purpose.
Perhaps he negotiated hardball: "I am the only one who understands this code or how to use it; you own the copyright, yes, but without me, it's useless, and will bitrot within years. I am leaving, and if I don't have it, I will simply rewrite it from scratch, and better, though it will take me a lot of time I would rather not spend and risks failure. So you have a choice: you can license it to me and we can share the results, or you can be a dog in the manger and pay full price for my future work. Choose."
Guess he'll be slapping himself in the face...seeing as if you read the blog post you'd know that he can change the license because he wrote essentially all the code...
He wrote some code and gave it away freely, and all he wanted was a thank you. You say he should have hired a lawyer to write his own license. This is absurd.
Maybe his hands were tied in the sense that releasing things open source would limit his ability to package and sell it off at a later date? I'm sure there were negotiations in progress at the time he would have considered doing so and from my POV, which could be terribly wrong, it would seem that releasing the thing you are considering to sell, for free, would sort of meddle with the entire process of selling it off?
He already released it, and once you release something under GPL you can't take it back. You can stop hosting it, but someone else is free to develop further on it.
Wow, that must really sting. They literally stole his creation. He shouldn't have released it under a permissive license if he's not willing to collaborate.
Honestly, I wouldn't care if he did steal my work as long as he included the credits. I think I've learned my lesson and will include a license with all my projects from now on.
reply