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On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Mark Meijer <meijer78@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/2/19 Alexandre Skyrme <askyrme@inf.puc-rio.br>:
>> your question is by no means insolent. as a matter of fact, i must admit i
>> didn't put a lot of thought when choosing the license. so, after your
>> message and a brief internal discussion, we decided to change it to the
>> mit license, which is also used for lua itself.
>>
>> i already altered the project info at luaforge and the copyright notice
>> included in the released file(s).
>
> On a side note, and not to be picky (I do hope the answer to my
> question is yes in this particular case), but is GPL-ed software even
> allowed to have that GPL license removed and replaced by a different
> license?
>

GPL and other open-source licenses are copyright licenses.
Traditionally copyright holders would put "You may not copy, re-sell,
... this work".

GPL on the other hand turns this around. It is the copyright holder
saying "I, the copyright holder, *permit* you to copy, re-sell, ... as
long as...". Of course the copyright holder is not subject to this
license, it is purely a way of stating how people are legally allowed
to use his/her work. A copyright holder can release the code to the
public under as may licenses as they please, even at the same time :)

Hope this helps (and this gets a lot more complicated than I present
it here, IANAL),
Matthew.