Re: [dev] Licensing question

From: Miles Rout <miles_AT_rout.nz>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2026 11:18:22 +1300

> On 2 Mar 2026, at 4:48 AM, Страхиња Радић <sr_AT_strahinja.org> wrote:
>
> Дана 26/03/01 02:28PM, Gimmi написа:
>> I am *not* a lawyer, however, AFAIK this is true if the license of the
>> original work has restrictions.
>> The MIT/X license under which suckless tools are, gives you the freedom to
>> sublicense the results, hence to change the license of the patched software.
>>
>> So the question of "How is the patch licensed" is still relevant IMO.
>
> Yes, this (also IANAL). Far from it being forbidden to create a patch
> under GNU GPL and publish it on one's own website, but keep in mind it
> relicenses the entire modified work under GNU GPL. So the decision of
> whether to include such a patch on the suckless.org wiki is entirely on
> the "people in charge" here and their policies.

This is my understanding of things. The whole topic is complicated by the fact different countries have different law and use different terminology, of course.

It is inaccurate to say "it relicenses the entire modified work under GNU GPL". A licence is something you distribute software under, not a static attribute of the software.

Presuming that the patch in question is a creative work sufficiently original to be subject to copyright, that patch can be distributed under whatever licence _or licences_ the author of it chooses.

I don't know if a patch counts as a derived work of the original software, but it probably does - patches often include snippets of the original source code. So the choice of licence for the patch might be constrained by the licence of the original work.

Here the original work does not constrain the choice of licence of derived works, so your patch can be whatever licence you like.

The result of applying the patch is a derivative of both the original work and the patch. So its licence may be constrained by both for third parties. Obviously if the original work is MIT and the patch is GPL then the patch author can still distribute the result of applying the patch under any licence.

But calling it "relicensing" is wrong. The modified version is just a work. It is a derived work of the original software, and of the patch, so how you may distribute it may be constrained, but as it is a work in its own right, when you distribute it under a particular licence you aren't "relicensing" it. You are just licensing it.

Point is, each individual instance of a work is its own work, and each individual conveyance of a work from one person to another may be under a different licence. The licence is really a property of that conveyance not of, for example, a project. It is a property of a project only as a social convention: people tend not to license software under different licences every time they distribute it, although someone has probably done that as an artistic statement at least once.

And the other point is that nothing someone does with a patch has any effect on the original software or how it is licensed.

Usual disclaimer, etc. This email is not legal advice.
Received on Sun Mar 01 2026 - 23:18:22 CET