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
