Are implicit dual-licensing agreements inherently anti-open?

[Wilson, Andrew]

David Barrett wrote:

> I guess my big question is:
>
> Is it fundamentally "not open" to license source code in such a
fashion 
> that the initial developer has the additional right to relicense the 
> code and all modifications under any license of his choosing, at any 
> future date?

To my mind the issue is not dual licensing per se, but mandatory
license back provisions to the initial developer.  Dual licensing
is fine.  However, the intent of
the mandatory license back in the much-discussed OVPL appears to
be to prevent forking by giving the ID a kind of right of first
refusal to any and all modifications.  An interesting topic for another
thread would be when it is desirable/ethical/moral to fork a code base,
but to my way of thinking, if you *can't* fork code due to
restrictive licensing, then said code is not open source.
Opt-in license back schemes, such as Apache's or the FSF's,
are more culturally compatible with open source.

Andy Wilson
Intel Open Source Technology Center