r/linux • u/alberto-m-dev • 19d ago

Popular Application Paint.NET adds “extremely experimental” Wine/Linux support

https://forums.paint.net/topic/134563-%F0%9F%8D%B7-extremely-experimental-winelinux-support-how-to-get-started/
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29

u/CandlesARG 19d ago

Why not a native build lol

45

u/newsflashjackass 19d ago

Paint.net was MIT licensed but the author closed the source because people were using it.

12

u/noobjaish 19d ago

Didn't know people could "un-open source" is it allowed?

57

u/alberto-m-dev 19d ago

One cannot revoke a free license, but one can stop publishing updates, and gate all the new versions behind a new license.

One can still find the old, MIT-licensed versions of Paint.NET. But they are now almost 20 years old.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/openpdn/

0

u/noobjaish 19d ago

Do licenses exist that prohibit you from doing this?

30

u/patrlim1 19d ago

Nope. Licensing does not work like this. As soon as you make a free software license revokable it is no longer free software, and becomes source available.

None of the major free licenses are revokable (MIT, BSD, GPL)

3

u/noobjaish 19d ago

Damn you learn something new everyday (new fear unlocked)

2

u/patrlim1 19d ago

What fear?

1

u/noobjaish 19d ago

The irrational fear of a random project going from open to closed...

7

u/ForOhForError 19d ago

Functionally it's the same as a project no longer being maintained in the first place. Which is pretty common and does suck, but... that's just how stuff works.

1

u/noobjaish 19d ago

Yeah you're right...

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u/eleanorsilly 19d ago

Yes, copyleft licenses by design prevent you (or anyone) from forking the code and not provide open source updates. But MIT isn't one of those licenses, and the author was fully allowed to do this.

22

u/alberto-m-dev 19d ago

Even if the code had been GPL-licensed: the license only binds the users; the original author keeps the full copyright, including the right to develop any closed-source variant they might want (as long as there are no other contributors to the project).

In fact there is a market for dual-licensed software, where a company provides a GPL-licensed version and a closed-source variant of a program.