zlacker

The author seems to be violating the GPL with Menuet64? Menuet64 is pretty clearly a derivative work of Menuet32, which is GPL. However, Menuet64 is released under a non-free license.

Originally I believed the author may be the sole author of Menuet32, and thus could relicense to whatever they wanted. However, the release notes (https://www.menuetos.net/relnotes.htm) credit many other authors with their contributions.

>>cmeach+(OP)
Any chance they required copyright assignment / CLA?

>>cmeach+(OP)
Does anyone know the history or motivation behind this? Wikipedia says "The 64-bit main distribution is now proprietary" implying it used to be free?

>>andai+rc
No, M64 was never free, as far as I can tell. I remember stumbling over M32 around 2006, when I was interested in OS development while being a CS student. I kept interest, and some time later a 64 bit version was published, but no source code, unfortunately.

The project kept growing a bit, very slowly. Seems like after v1.00 the author lost most interest. So if it is still a prototype work without any commercial usage, it would be great to have it published with source code.

>>cmeach+(OP)
Well it depends on the potential agreement with the other authors, I would say it is none of our business if they don't complain about it.

Not sure if it becomes "legal" to breach the GPL if original authors die though.

>>cmeach+(OP)
I also don't really understand the reason for the relicensing. There doesn't seem to be a commercial version available.

>>GekkeP+Sl
The author was not happy with their code being used in KolibriOS, a fork.

http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?p=216272#216272