Licensing question

Suppose someone created a derived work from a work that was GPL'd. When they created it they also made it GPL. They essentially used the same drawings that the original work did while making some additions and changes. About two months later it seems to have become popular with people downloading the project files. They now change the license to CC BY-NC 3.0. Can they really do that?

It doesn't matter for hardware as those are copyright licenses and not patents. Hardware made for those drawings is legally not restricted in terms of manufacture or distribution. The copyright license pertain t the distribution of the files or software only, not the physical hardware.

That said, once something is released as a GPL it retains that license in perpetuity. If that same person then creates another work similar to or even the same thing as a different version not including any original code or drawings they can distribute that as they see fit but that does not negate what was released under the GPL license.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 10:04PM by vegasloki.

For anyone wanting more information, this article has a lot of helpful information about how licenses do (and do not) apply to hardware: What's the deal with copyright and 3D printing?.

Ok, that's what I was thinking. If you modify GPL drawing or code, then it still has to be GPL.

Good document, thank you.