Open WebUI's Gamble: "Your BSD code is ours unless you say no"

3 points by halifaxbeard 1 year ago | 2 comments

tl;dr - story old as time- OSS project experiences white-boxing, then moves away from an OSI license.

* pre v0.6.6 the project was BSD-3 licensed * v0.6.6 was released under BSD-3 + branding requirements * no CLA was required for contributions prior to the switch * they didn't obtain consent from all contributors prior to the switch

The author is taking the opt-out approach to the licensing change - https://docs.openwebui.com/license/

> If you contributed code pre-v0.6.6 and now wish to have it removed (i.e., you do not consent to the updated project structure or licensing), we will promptly honor your request and excise it from subsequent releases. Just contact us and reference the relevant code.

Is it just me, or does this not pass the smell test?

gus_massa 1 year ago |

BSD is a permissive licence. Anyone can use the code, even in closed source or with other licence or weird licence. (It may require to keep the original author near the top, I don't remember, IANAL.) MIT and WTFPL are very similar.

If someone doesn't want their code to be sed in closed source or with other licence or weird licence, then they must use GPL or AGPL or something similar.

actionfromafar 1 year ago |

They can't retroactively change the license of code they do not own copyright to. They seem aware of that though, quote

    The original BSD-3 license continues to apply for all contributions made to the codebase up to and including release v0.6.5.

They can put all new code under their weird proprietary license, though.