
Ask HN: Licensing Question – MIT on Top of GPLv3? - westonplatter0
I am not a lawyer and respect those who are.<p>I oversee an open source project, https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;westonplatter&#x2F;phashion.<p>A person recently asked (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;westonplatter&#x2F;phashion&#x2F;issues&#x2F;68) if the project needs to be licensed per GPLv3 to match the phash source code license, which is &quot;included&quot; in the library. By included, I mean that the ruby gem actually carries a copy of the phash source code in the source code. Said differently, phashion does NOT reference a locally installed version of phash.<p>My question, in order to legally adhere to the phash GPLv3, should I change the license to GPLv3?<p>PS - I will view all comments as opinions, and do expect them to embody or be intended as legal advice. Just looking for second person&#x27;s perspective.
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eesmith
What I know about this is from 10 years ago. It's one of the "Twenty questions
about the GPL" listed at [https://jacobian.org/2009/jul/13/gpl-
questions/](https://jacobian.org/2009/jul/13/gpl-questions/) .

One of the responses is at
[https://gist.github.com/Neurogami/146713](https://gist.github.com/Neurogami/146713)
:

> "Unfortunately all the FSF can provide on a number of these questions is
> their opinion on the matter. Having spoken with the Software Freedom Law
> Center about the import issue recently the reality is there is no answer to
> some of these questions because no one has ever taken them to court."

The HN thread about those 20 questions is at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702304)
.

My view is to follow the intent of GPLv3 and either make your package GPLv3
(though you can leave the copyright to your own code as MIT), or remove the
GPLv3 package.

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belorn
A lot of people want to treat copyright licenses as code, but law doesn't work
like that. The question is what a court/judge would think about the work as a
whole and how it functions.

If you gave a non-technical person a copy, would they look at the project as a
single work or two work that simply interact with each other. If it is the
later and you think that is what most people would interpret it as, then no
need to change the license. If not then you should change the license as what
you got is a combined work which GPLv3 has specific requirements for.

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gus_massa
GPL is "viral". If your code has inside a copy (perhaps with some
modifications) of a project that has the GPL license, then you must use the
GPL license for the whole project.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_license)

That is the reason why some people love the GPL license.

That is the reason why some people hate the GPL license.

------
nabla9
Yes. The license is GPL not LGPL so there is no other way to interpret the
situation.

Even if you use locally installed version of phash library, you still must
license under GPLv3. They way the library package is installed has nothing to
do with the license you must choose.

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ryacko
Vivaldi is BSD with GPL Chromium code.

~~~
nabla9
Chromium is multi-licensed. None of the code is exclusively GPL as far as I
know.

