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> the whole project virally becomes GPL It does not. There is no such thing in copyright law as one work changing the license of another work. The idea of "vir
by goodpoint 4y ago
> the whole project virally becomes GPL
It does not. There is no such thing in copyright law as one work changing the license of another work. The idea of "virality" is incorrect.
If an author is violating the GPL by distributing e.g. MIT licensed code that links to GPL code it's up to them to choose between switching the whole work to GPL, or stop distributing it, or keep using MIT and stop including the GPL part.
They can even keep using MIT in libraries that are included in the main project and other combinations.
edit: see @bonzini reply
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> or keep using MIT and stop including the GPL part. Well, in this case it appears that they're violating the license of the permissively licensed code, which still requires attribution. Points for uniformity, I guess...
- rmccue 4y agoYeah, I’m simplifying because the linking part is the bit that’s relevant to this discussion; any other source that isn’t HN comments is a better way to get into the details. The general point stands, which is that GPL considers linking to incorporate the library into the work whereas LGPL says it doesn’t.