At 04:26 PM 29/01/2011, you wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>
>I'm looking at various Open Source licences at the moment
>for a College project, and I was curious about how Borland
>did what they did with the Interbase/Firebird code - i.e.
>released it and then closed sourced it again.

Inprise (as they were then) made the beta InterBase 6.0 open source. Neither Inprise nor Borland (as they renamed themselves later) ever had anything to do with the Firebird code.

Inprise started an open source project themselves on Sourceforge. It was a read-only tree. It lasted for about a year and just simply disappeared.

>How come they could do that?

They didn't do what you say they did.

>Is any code developed by Firebird developers susceptible to be "robbed" by
>Embarcadero? Or anyone else?

Of course. Absolutely.

>Or was it, as the holders of the copyright, they could do
>what they liked with their own code, but not with other
>people's?

As holders of the copyright, yes, they can do what they like with *their* code. With the original IB 6.0 code, they can do what they like with *their* code *except* sue anyone for using it according to the terms of the licence it was released under.

>Does this mean, for example, that Firefox (not Firebird) code could be taken back by Netscape?

Firefox was developed by Mozilla from open sources handed over by Netscape. Firebird was developed by us (Firebird Project) from open sources handed over by Inprise. When sources are open, it means anyone can use them as long as that use complies with the conditions of the relevant licence.

Helen