Hi goatpig,
I'm concerned about the ability to just simply change the license for the program. I believe that if you still use parts of the old Armory under the AGPL3 that forces you to release your program under the AGPL3.
I'm not a lawyer but what frightens me is that if the "powers that be" of Armory couldn't/wouldn't allow you to use the 0.94 code, I don't have a lot of faith that they might not allow you to continue to work on the program under a different license.
I want Armory to continue, and I would not like to see your work shutdown/removed/destroyed by the copyright holders. Admittedly if they couldn't get the rights to the program for the community before this shut down, they probably wont easily be able to claim a copyright violation.
I don't know how Armory (the company) is structured, but maybe you can see if they will give you the right to license the program differently that doesn't force this AGPL3 upon you.
Its very saddening to hear from Alan about Armory taking this turn. I know the work that Alan, you, knightDK, (and all of the testers and others idk off the top of my head currently) has been fantastic and hope to keep seeing great things from all including the community.
It's not 100% clear, but....the existing licence allows the original developers / company to retain ownership of what they developed. But, this is the key thing...they gave rights away to their code for no fee.
If someone else builds on top, then what is their loss? What would the law suit say on the IP case? You added your own code, for which you give it away for free; and it hurt my IP, which I also gave away freely?
Seriously. Who is going to spend $100k on chasing a law suit, without any financial loss that they can show?
Here is your homework: A thought experiment. You are heading to your lawyers office, to discuss making a claim about someone using your open source software, to make more open source software....what exactly are you going to say to your lawyer?