Can I relicense my own Fair License project into Apache 2.0?

[jpventura]

I am creating a project and, in order to have some copyright protection to avoid a cannibalized competition, I would like to release the project under Fair License.

Initially I thought about providing a Affero GPL v3.0 dual-license and, once the project is completed (i.e. release 1.0.0), I would relicense the project under Apache 2.0.

However I am considering using Fair License instead of AGPL v3.0 due its simplicity.

Since I am the sole copyright owner, I would like to know if/how I could change the license, also granting the Apache License to clients that already possess older versions of the project as well.

[Aspie96]

(I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice)

A license is a permission from the copyright holder.

If you are the only copyright holder (which also implies you didn't get any contributions from others) then you do not need a license at all and the terms and conditions of the licenses you give to others don't apply to you at all.

You may use your own works however you want, you don't need your own permission.

As an analogy: if you allow me to use your car, provided that I meet certain conditions (only wearing clean shoes), does it mean that you have any less of a right to ride your car? Of course not. You don't need any permission at all.

The idea of copyright is that there are things only the copyright holder can do. "No license" = "no permission" and it is maximally restrictive. A license is a permission, to someone else, to do things that are otherwise forbidden to them by copyrgith law.

What you cannot do, however, is revoke licenses you have already granted. So if you chose a new license for a certain version that you already licensed, the old license still applies (the user can chose which of the two licenses to accept). And if a new version is under a different license, users can keep using the previous version under the previous license.

[Aspie96]

Note: DO NOT call this the "Fair License". The Fair License is here: http://opensource.org/licenses/fair.php

This is Fair Use License

[unional]

This is Fair Use License

Fair Use License or Fair Source License?

[chadwhitacre]

Closing in light of #9. 🙏