
Ask HN: Can I vendor a GNU GPL package into a MIT project? - _Marak_
I&#x27;m helping maintain a moderately popular open-source project, and we have a pull request which requires that we vendor a single file which is licensed GNU GPL.<p>No modifications will be performed to the GPL file itself, but it will be dynamically required every-time our open-source package is loaded. We don&#x27;t distribute any binaries, only source code.<p>I have no idea how GPL copyleft works.<p>Will including a single GPL file in the MIT project cause the entire project to be GPL?
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cyphar
Yes, but it's likely that the whole project would have to be distributed under
the GNU GPL (unless the GPL parts are removed). If you're only using it
internally, it doesn't matter.

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_Marak_
That is what I was afraid of. I don't want five years of collective MIT work
to suddenly turn into GPL.

Here is the issue at hand:
[https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/pull/258](https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/pull/258)

I've requested the original author provide dual licensing. We are also
searching for alternative implementations.

~~~
cyphar
Looking at the example, the cc generator code is so small that one couldn't
reasonably consider it to be a significant enough program. In general, I don't
like license FUD (who's actually going to sue you) but given how trivial the
code is, surely you can reimplement your own version of a ~100 line script?

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belorn
No, it will not cause the entire project to be GPL.

The part that is GPL will have to be GPL, and everything else need to be
compatible with GPL in order to satisfy the conditions of the license. MIT is
compatible, so there is no problem. Going forward, no changes need to be done
to the projects license, people can still submit patches under MIT, and so on.

There is a minor consideration. If someone forks your MIT project and puts it
into a proprietary product, then the GPL file need to be removed.

