Re: [hackers] Licensing status of patches

From: Laslo Hunhold <dev_AT_frign.de>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2020 08:32:52 +0200

On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 20:01:41 +0100
Daniel Littlewood <danielittlewood_AT_gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Daniel,

> Thanks for your reply - I appreciate that this does not have much
> practical importance. Unfortunately the simplest way for me to version
> my dwm copy is by hosting it on Github, which is in some sense
> "publishing" it. I was hoping to be able to do this without worrying,
> but it seems that the MIT license offers no such guarantee. I wonder
> if the suckless team had considered using the GPL (which would).

in my opinion the GPL is too restrictive. Many people (including
myself) actively avoid GPL-software in their workflows, as the
copyleft-scheme spreads like cancer, especially with the GPLv3, which
basically forces you to license your project under the GPLv3 if you use
a GPLv3-library in your project. I know, there's the LGPLv3 for
libraries, but many many libraries are licensed as GPLv3.

> Of course, it's true that in practice that a patcher is unlikely to
> care if their patch is shared more widely (and not all of them are so
> small). But after all, one could probably say the same about dwm's
> license itself. If I choose to share the thing more widely, I will
> probably take the pains to contact them. After all, it's best to be
> sure.

I wouldn't worry about that. In Germany there's a concept of a
"Schöpfungshöhe" (i.e. threshold of originality), and I don't think
that it's even reached with most of the patches in the wiki.

With best regards

Laslo
Received on Wed Sep 30 2020 - 08:32:52 CEST