This is a list of notable software packages which were published as free and open-source software, or into the public domain, but were made proprietary software, or otherwise switched to a license (including source-available licenses) that is not considered to be free and open source.
Title | Original release | Relicensed release | Initial free license | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Akka | 2009 | 2022 | Apache License | Relicensed under the non-free "Business Source License".[1][2] |
CockroachDB | 2015 | 2019 | Apache License | Relicensed under the non-free "Business Source License".[3] |
Elasticsearch | 2010 | 2021 | Apache License | Re-licensed under the non-free "Elastic License" and Server Side Public License mentioned below, citing that Amazon Web Services was not fairly contributing back to the software. Amazon and other vendors subsequently led the OpenSearch fork based on the Apache-licensed version of Elasticsearch.[4][5][6] |
Emby | 2014 | 2018 | GPL | Source code closed on December 8, 2018.[7] Forked as Jellyfin. |
FBReader | 2013 | 2015 | GPL | Apparently the number of devs was limited, and they all agreed to relicense it.[citation needed] |
LiveCode | 2013 | 2021 | GPL | The Livecode company developed it, ran a Kickstarter campaign to GPL it, ran it for eight years-open-source, and then relicensed it back to proprietary, saying there were few other contributors, most were using the free GPL version, and they couldn't sustain the project.[8] |
LiveJournal | 1999 | 2014 | GPL | The source code was made private in 2014. |
MongoDB | 2009 | 2018 | GNU Affero GPL | Re-licensed under the "Server Side Public License" (SSPL), a self-published modification of the GNU General Public License v3 that requires the entirety of any "service" that incorporates SSPL-licensed software, including all components necessary for someone to implement the service themselves (in comparison to the previous AGPL license, which only requires the release of the source code for the instance of AGPL-licensed software when conveyed to users over a network) to be licensed and released under the SSPL.[9] The license has been rejected as free software by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Debian Project for discriminating against specific forms of commercial use.[9][10] |
Nexuiz | 2005 | 2012 | GPL | Game abandoned in favour of a commercial video game of the same name, which licensed the Nexuiz title but is not based on its engine. Forks such as Xonotic continue the community development of the game.[11] |
OctoberCMS | 2014 | 2021 | MIT License | Cited the sustainability of its open source model as a factor.[12] October had been forked by its former maintainers in March 2021 as Winter, citing a "systemic breakdown in communication" between them and the lead founders of the project.[13][14] |
OTRS | 2001 | 2020 | GPL | Support for the Community Edition dropped on December 23, 2020,[15] forked as Znuny. |
Paint.NET | 2004 | 2007 | MIT License | Re-licensed under a freeware license that prohibits modification or resale, citing issues with plagiarized versions of the software with branding and attribution stripped from its open source code.[16] |
PyMOL | 2000 | 2010 | Python License[17] | [18][19][20][21] |
2008 | 2017 | Common Public Attribution License | Source code was made private in 2017, as the internal codebase had already diverged significantly from the public one. | |
Tux Racer | 2000 | 2002 | GPL | Commercial expansion by original authors, also called Tux Racer. |