Own project: Open source to closed source [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

Taking an open source project to closed source (4 answers)

Closed 4 years ago.

In this thread it is discussed if it is legally possible to take on open source project and close its sources. But this seems to refer to someone else's project.

So, my question is: What about my own source? Let's say I release the first version as open source, then I make some changes and I want the code from now on to be closed source.

• Is that possible with me as the original copyright holder (with no one having contributed changes except me)?
• Even if I release my program as open source, I am the copyright holder after all, am I?

Answer 1

Is that possible with me as the original copyright holder (with no one having contributed changes except me)?

Yes, of course. It's your code, you can do whatever you want with it.

Even if I release my program as open source, I am the copyright holder after all, am I?

Yes, of course. If you weren't, you wouldn't be able to release it as open source, after all – only the copyright holder can give a license.

In addition, you can also choose to stop distributing the older versions, or changing their licenses to be proprietary as well. However, everybody who already received a license from you, has that license, you cannot undo that.

Answer 2

In the year 2000, Borland released the code to its InterBase database software as open source. For weird corporate politics reasons, they quickly walked it back and decided that further development of InterBase would continue as a proprietary product, as it had before, and they were able to do that. As noted above, they were the copyright holder and they had the right to do so.

What they didn't have the right to do, though, was take back the open-source code that they had already released. Borland stopped maintaining it, but it was still out there, legally made available to anyone who would abide by the open-source licence the code was released under, and the community took over. They couldn't call it InterBase because that was a registered trademark held by Borland, so they called the new fork Firebird.

Today, both the open-source Firebird database and the proprietary InterBase projects still exist and are under active development and maintenance.

Answer 3

As the original copyright holder and no one else holding the copyright to any portions of the project, you can choose to close-source a later version. You can also choose to change the license on previously released versions. It won't stop anyone from using the version(s) under the license they received it under, though.