When GPL Software Goes Bad

[ Thanks to Paul Hayes for this link. ]

"Users of a popular open-source accounting system may have just updated to a license they would never have agreed to had the author actually told them it had changed. What's more, the author is actively censoring attempts to advise the userbase of the license change, and appears to be making an attempt to retrospectively re-license all prior versions as well.

"I have just been advised that DWS has just updated their licensing conditions on their website, and have returned SQL-Ledger to the GPLv2 license. This is a great step from DWS as there was some confusion over the legal status of several translations which were user-contributed and had been re-licensed without the original author's consent. He has also released 2.8.1 of the software which I am told includes the GPL license. These changes have come as this article was reaching the upper vote levels in Slashdot's "firehose" submission queue, and has likely come as a reaction to the coverage on the LedgerSMB lists of this article (still no license-related posts appear on the SQL-Ledger lists). The SOSL is still available on the site..."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Linux.com: Watch Your Work Habits with Rachota 2.1(Mar 06, 2007)
• InfoWorld: Accounting Vendors Block Linux Server Use(Jan 10, 2007)
• Linux.com: Ledger, The Bran Muffin of Accounting Tools(Nov 14, 2006)
• Linux.com: SQL-Ledger: Impressive Capabilities, But Needs Polish(Nov 13, 2006)