Well, one of the reasons I like and contribute to this project is that it's MIT-licensed, so one can either keep it open or close it down. In that sense it's more free and it's like a gift to the world, and it can be used for learning or whatever purpose really.

I don't think there's any point in GPL-ing it either, because:

• GIMP, which is way more complex, and allows mostly everything Pinta does, and then a lot more, is already GPL-ed, so we already have an image editing program that is forever free
• There's already a GPL-ed Pinta-like application: Pixelitor
• Even though making a nonfree derivative or otherwise abusing the contributors' efforts is legal, anyone who did it would look really bad, and on the practical side it's hard to see any commercial reason that anyone would do it
• I would just fork the last MIT-licensed version of Pinta 😂 (or someone else would) and if you think about it, Pinta itself draws heavily from the last version of Paint.NET that was MIT-licensed. In this sense, what is free will stay free.

The benefit is that we would be able to include all GPL effects without having to separate them. Also, Pinta has a totally different appeal compared to GIMP.

I personally consider GPL to be better than permissive licenses for drawing software, and we saw what happened to paintdotnet, so to end up risking it all to happen again (which is allowed by the MIT license) is certainly not good (even for all looking bad there is, the moment Pinta becomes good enough, some shady company forks it, puts a ton of money on their proprietary version, and leaves Pinta with less features, gaining market share on the expense of all of us). But fun to see someone get more motivated to contribute on MIT, I feel the opposite and prefer to contribute to GPL hehehe.

so to end up risking it all to happen again (which is allowed by the MIT license) is certainly not good

@pedropaulosuzuki I am not a lawyer, but I think you might be misunderstanding how software licensing works.

The author of a work obtains ownership of its copyright automatically, at least in the US, where many common software licenses (including MIT and GPL) come from, and he is free to choose the license for his work.

The owner of the copyright of some application, even if it's GPL'd, can decide to release a new version of the software under a different license, even a nonfree one, and that new version would be nonfree even if the previous one was.

In the case of Paint.NET, it's the author who decided to change the license. Anyone obtaining the code under the old license is free to use it under those old conditions, but the copyright still belongs to the original author.

The only condition set by the MIT license is that the copyright notice is included. Someone could use it for a closed app, but they would still have to abide by that rule and say "this application includes code from Rick Brewster". Someone releasing the app under the GPL would also have to include those copyright notices. The requirement is minimal, but it is there.

The reason that GPL'd code cannot be MIT-licensed is that the GPL sets many more conditions, among them copyleft, and since I am not the copyright owner of (say) GIMP I cannot modify those conditions. If I were the owner I certainly could release the code whose copyright I own under a different license, but not the code whose copyright others own. They would have to be on board.

I hope this helps.

@pedropaulosuzuki I am not a lawyer, but I think you might be misunderstanding how software licensing works.

The author of a work obtains ownership of its copyright automatically, at least in the US, where many common software licenses (including MIT and GPL) come from, and he is free to choose the license for his work.

The owner of the copyright of some application, even if it's GPL'd, can decide to release a new version of the software under a different license, even a nonfree one, and that new version would be nonfree even if the previous one was.

In the case of Paint.NET, it's the author who decided to change the license. Anyone obtaining the code under the old license is free to use it under those old conditions, but the copyright still belongs to the original author.

The only condition set by the MIT license is that the copyright notice is included. Someone could use it for a closed app, but they would still have to abide by that rule and say "this application includes code from Rick Brewster". Someone releasing the app under the GPL would also have to include those copyright notices. But the requirement is there.

The reason that GPL'd code cannot be MIT-licensed is that the GPL sets many more conditions, among them copyleft, and since I am not the copyright owner of (say) GIMP I cannot modify those conditions. If I were the owner I certainly could release the code whose copyright I own under a different license, but not the rest.

I hope this helps.

You probably misinterpreted this statement of mine:

"and we saw what happened to paintdotnet, so to end up risking it all to happen again"

What I mean is that some third party can fork Pinta and make it under any other license, like paintdotnet did. Paintdotnet did it because it was the original author, while third parties can only do it if the code is permissive. Either way, MIT allows any third party to do the same paintdotnet did, even if for different reasons. In no way I implied paintdotnet wouldn't be able to do it if it was GPL, but that MIT allows third parties to do the same, and GPL doesn't. Hope that clarifies.

I still believe MIT is not a good license for projects like Pinta, but it's better than a proprietary license.

Changing from paintdotnet old license and MIT license to GPL wouldn't require asking permission of past contributors, because the previous licenses are permissive, which means anyone can re-license it however they please (just need to give credits to original project). If the project had a more restrictive license, then it could require asking previous contributors.

We could also dual-license: Project distributed under GPLv2 or later and under MIT. One version (GPL) would have access to all effects, while MIT would only have access to some of those, but could load the others via Addin. Looks like too much work, but it's possible.

Btw: I agree on the point about maintenance. We could probably still load the plugins by default, tho.

Just to add a bit of technicality,

The hypothetical isn't converting from MIT to GPL, that'd be inproper with the attribution requirements.

The hypothetical is that Pinta would be both MIT and GPL at the same time. So legally the work never stops being MIT, but from a forward perspective becomes both, with GPL becoming the dominant policy driver and effectively making citing the MIT license a courtesy (which it effectively already is). The two licenses do not disagree with each other so you can add restrictions but not remove them once they're there (without permission from the original authors).

That's great! I think we'd need to go through them more closely and figure out which ones don't already have an equivalent in Pinta already, and would be useful to have

this is genuinely an impressive unexpected twist!
Nice work! Thanks to you both for talking!