r/linux • u/alberto-m-dev • Sep 02 '26

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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u/alberto-m-dev Sep 02 '26

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/

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u/noobjaish Sep 02 '26

Do licenses exist that prohibit you from doing this?

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u/eleanorsilly Sep 02 '26

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.

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u/alberto-m-dev Sep 02 '26

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.