GPL license and my own code

[phhnguyen]

I have planed to contribute some my own code (about a chess variant) to an open source project. The project has been releasing under GPL license. My own code will be 1st release with that project.

AFAIK if anyone who releases a new app using any piece of code of a GLP project must make his new app code be available to download since it is requested by GPL license, correct?

Now suppose I release a new app using only my own code (not code of other contributors) from that project. Could I get some exemptions from GLP license? I mean if I could release my new app as a closed source (without making my code be available)?

Thanks

[jdart]

As I understand it:

If you contribute your own code to a GPL project it also needs to be licensed under GPL, or a compatible license.

If you want to take the same code you contributed, or a derivative of it and release it under a different license, or make it into a closed source project, you can do that: it is still your code. (It is pretty common for companies that have an open source model to offer a commercial license as an alternative, for those customers who don't want GPL restrictions. They can do that because they own the code).

But you can't bundle or link any part of GPL code you don't own together with your code and release that with a non-GPL license, unless you have acquired that foreign code under a different license. GPL is "sticky:" taking a little bit of GPL code means accepting the GPL license.

--Jon

[hgm]

Indeed, you can release code you own the copyright of under different licences, even if these are incompatible with each other. If you released code under the GPL, you cannot prevent others from using that code for their own open-source purposes. But you can still modify it, and use it in a public closed-source project. That others have to satisfy the conditions of the GPL to use the code doesn't bind you in any way. It was just a condition YOU enforced on OTHERS. You can still do whatever you want with your own code.

You would have a problem if you wanted to transfer your copyrights to someone else. In that transfer agreement you should then make sure to arrange that you would still be allowed to use that code for your own closed-source project. This happened for instance when Fruit 2.1 copyrights were transferred to the Free Software Foundation. Fruit 2.3 was a closed-source commercial project based on the same code, and it was agreed that the party developing that would get a licence from FSF to continue doing that.

[phhnguyen]

Thanks all, it is clear to me now