The only code that probably could be called free was growisofs, but growisofs
at that time was not under GPL (altough the Author claimed so) because
commercial publishing was not allowed. Growisofs is now free, but the change
to a real free license was made after the complete cdrecord source was published
under a free license.
dvd+rw-tools were available under same license, GPL, all along, and
nothing has changed "after the complete cdrecord source was published
under a free license." I suppose the above comment refers to
http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/solaris.com.html. Quoting it:
"The agreement is not meant to encumber GPL-compliant usage of the
sofware in question, for example no explicit permission/license is
required, if the same party chooses to download and deploy it internally
in their Solaris environment, e.g. for backup purposes, or even
re-distribute it under GPL terms."
I can assure that this was the intention from the moment of agreement,
I believe you that you may have intended to have it be free.
The named limitation however caused e.g. Sun to make an agreement with you
before Sun started to publish growisofs. So at least Sun also had the
impression that the license situation was unclear. If there was an obvious and
definitive GPL on growisofs, Sun did just take it.
The situation in Germany is definitively that a Judge would take the named
limitytion as an expression of will from the author that is wheighted more
heavy than the GPL. This is amongst others, because the GPL is a license
written by other people.