Questions Regarding Buying a License and Closing up Source Code

So after some years of using JUCE on and off for various projects, I’m finally thinking of picking up an Indie license. All my previous projects used the open-source option, where you could omit the JUCE splash screen if you enabled the JUCER_ENABLE_GPL_MODE flag and made sure your code was open sourced.

I plan to work on some existing projects that I would like to close up the source code. If I buy a license, I assume I will have to keep an archival version of the code for products I released for the the versions that were open-sourced prior. Is that correct? So for software I’ve released, I would duplicate the repositories, archive them, and keep those open-sourced, then close the original repo up as I move forward with my future additions under the Indie license.

Is this correct? Or is it not possible to close the source code up after software has been released under the GPL option? I really want to make sure I’m doing the correct thing here.

Also, what about projects that I never released, code the I wrote locally and never pushed anywhere because there was never any release associated with that code… if I buy an Indie license, will those still have to be open-sourced (if I ever release them) because they were started under the GPL license?

Thanks

The usual caveat applies here - I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

That being said, I think you’re conforming to all the requirements of the licenses. You, explicitly as the author and copyright holder, are free to change the license to whatever you want, including a closed-source license.

Code previously distributed under the GPLv3 remains under the GPLv3. The key word here is ‘distributed’. Having previously distributed a version of one of your projects under the GPLv3, that version of that project will remain under the GPLv3. Projects that you have never distributed are not bound by the terms of the GPLv3, and can be released under whatever new license you want.

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Hey @t0m, thanks for helping me to feel more confident in my understanding of this process (though I do understand you aren’t a lawyer and are not responsible if any of the advice given is incorrect and results in anything negative). I appreciate it!