Hello,
On 01/03/2026 10:50, Страхиња Радић wrote:
> Дана 26/02/28 02:28PM, Gimmi написа:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I was wondering what is the license of the patches published on the
>> suckless.org website. A few of them include a license header pointing to the
>> LICENSE file in the project, so they are under the MIT/X license. However,
>> many of them do not have a proper license notice.
>>
>> Is there some kind of implied licenses for the patches once they are
>> uploaded?
>
> It only makes sense for the license of a patch to be the same as that
> of the program it applies to. Otherwise, programs would be subject to
> relicensing if the license of the patch is overriding (like GNU GPL
> is).
>
I know that it makes sense and I agree on the principle, but I am afraid
current copyright law does not agree with us.
If I were to publish a patch to a software, I can put the patch under
the license I want and I can choose the GPL: the problem of complying
with the requirements of both licenses is, legally speaking, on the
person that applies the patch.
Worse, if a patch does not specify a license, according to current
copyright law, you cannot redistribute it (I don't even know if you can
actually _use_ it).
Moreover, the MIT/X license allows sublicensing, so the license of the
final program _can_ be changed and one can argue that should the license
of the patch be more restrictive, it would override the MIT/X license.
IMO this should be cleared up for every patch, not only for a small
subset that included a comment at the beginning.
--
Gimmi
Received on Sun Mar 01 2026 - 13:38:30 CET