(Locked) I need your opinion...

Hi guys, I run into unpleasant situation and I need your opinion. In one of my products I am using a jQuery plugin which was licensed under MIT license (until yesterday). When the creator of the script saw that you can make money out of it he changed the license to non-commercial BSD (which doesn’t allow redistribution of the script for monetary gain). I know that the law doesn’t work backwards in time so he cannot do anything about the copies I have already sold but what about selling this product in the feature? Also I am developing (finishing) another product based on this plugin, please tell me what you think about this.

In my opinion I can still sell the product with the old version of the script under MIT license and I can develop new products based on the old script which was licensed under MIT . The new license should apply only to the newest version of the script.

I got an answer, but still looking for your opinion. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10547995/mit-license-changed-to-non-commercial-bsd

Like the guy on SO said, I also think that your interpretation is correct.

But did you try to talk with author of that script? Maybe he could give you permission to use it for a % of sales.

«He changed the license because he wanted me to give him 75% of the income I made, when I disagree with him he changed the license… – mpcreation 8 mins ago»

what a horrible situation :/

It’s a hard say, first this start to be overall trend by many developer’s as they start killing existent MIT license, from what i see once the license change you cannot sell new item using that script .

But don’t go far Kuba man if you remember in other life where you develop flash items GS change his MIT license and we couldn’t sold our work if we use his class without proper pay license ,this is why i was so against that move and all our community had to change our envato items or pay for license so i never ever use his class (not that i use it before anyway) .

Those guys take the advantage of the popular script and on the first success they change the license vs if you believe in your work give the proper license and don’t mess with us . Look at GS now, a fade memory in our history (not cos` of license)

75%

There isn’t any similar library, mit licensed? Even if you need to change/improve it further, i guess it should be the path to follow. Honestly, sometimes i think why not so many authors of mit licensed scripts start to do the same, looking at how much money others are making with their work.

That’s a horrible change. It is understandable that the guys who spend much time on programming/math may not aware about licensing chaos / ethics / commercial aspects. No doubt the script was rare and epic. This shows MIT licence from anonymous authors / community always having risk.

Hope your current work is safe with the older version / license; however releasing a new version after knowing the original author’s bitterness is risky.

tsafi said
It’s a hard say, first this start to be overall trend by many developer’s as they start killing existent MIT license, from what i see once the license change you cannot sell new item using that script .

In the ‘eyes of law’ once script is released under a MIT license it stays like this forever and I can do whatever I want with it until I violate the MIT license. Once the license is changed ‘new version’ of script is created which I cannot use. But the old script (which I am using) is still under MIT license. Law doesn’t work backwards in time…

VF said
Hope your current work is safe with the older version / license; however releasing a new version after knowing the original author’s bitterness is risky.

Maybe, but my project is 95% done and from the law side I am clean…