That is a very good point.

We considered whether data existing before a licence change would be
covered, but we hadn't factored the potential need for gaining permissions
for a change to be considered effective.

We have proposed that miners be the main beneficiaries of licensing and
there is a consideration on whether they should vote to adopt the new
terms. While not the preferred route, that would overcome any issues to
what is an otherwise honest 'error and omission.' There doesn't seem to be
anyone who could claim to have suffered any economic losses so this may not
be an issue. It merits further investigation.

The block chain is in perpetual change, so the sooner a change is agreed
upon, if at all, the more data it will cover without any reservations. At
any rate, we believe the changes would be considered effective on a
retrospective basis.


On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Btc Drak <btcdrak@gmail.com> wrote:

> Without commenting on your proposal at all, the general problem with
> licensing after the fact is you require the permission of every
> copyright holder in order to make the change.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Ahmed Zsales via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > We believe the network requires a block chain licence to supplement the
> > existing MIT Licence which we believe only covers the core reference
> client
> > software.
> >
> > Replacing or amending the existing MIT Licence is beyond the scope of
> this
> > draft BIP.
> >
> > Rationale and details of our draft BIP for discussion and evaluation are
> > here:
> >
> >
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEbhrQ4ELzBMVFxajNZa2hzMTg/view?usp=sharing
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ahmed
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > bitcoin-dev mailing list
> > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> >
>