For me, the defining characteristic of open source is that you’re giving up control over your code. You can choose how much to give up, based on the license, but you pretty much always end up with less control than if you kept it closed source.
That’s good! It’s the point. I tend to license my open source work as public domain, which gives up as much control as possible, but that’s just me.
Regardless, once you’ve given up control, it’s gone. You can re-license going forward, but not retroactively. You can’t – or at least, shouldn’t – try to claw back control later. You gave it up. That’s the whole point.
@snarfed.org π―
I am very fond of the dual of this:
as a user of open source I retain more control over my own device
if the next version of the program I use is subscription based or tied to a paid API or even just poorly designed to suit my needs, the previous version is still there for all of use to work with
while open source is often a radical choice when you consider the functionality you lose (eg. no more photoshop or gmail etc.) it’s the conservative choice when you consider the long term control over your own tools and digital resources if you do your work with a computer
@snarfed.org Oh wow, even the Bridgy stuff is CC0, I haven’t noticed that – interesting approachβ¦