Re: Mixing GPL and non-copyleft code in source files

["Nguyễn Gia Phong via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org>]

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On 2023-12-24 at 03:41+01:00, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:
> Publishing some source code under the GPL v3 (or later)
> does not preclude [someone] as the sole author
> from also publishing it under the CC-0.  It does
> defeat the purpose of the GPL if you, however,
> because whoever wants to make a proprietary spin-off
> will simply take the CC-0, since whereas the GPL
> gives you access to all the changes when they redistribute it,
> the CC-0 gives you bupkis.

It's worth noting that CC0 is not a license but a public domain
dedication.  One cannot dual-license it with GPL because copyright
no longer applies to the work: https://creativecommons.org/faq

A CC0 patch to a GPL software does not change the licensing status
of the software, and any modification on top of the public domain
works can continue to be under the GPL.  This goes for other parts of
Guix that alone are not copyrightable like the list of facebook hosts.

Furthermore, even if the author decides to dual license it, it makes
no difference to predatory corporations whether if the information
about the permissively licensed snippets are documented mainline:
that piece of code is still licensed that way.  However, once again
note that the dual-licensed modules will become copyleft after
any modification under the GPL.

The intention of the GPL and software freedom is to protect the freedom
of end-users: it concerns their rights over the overall program.
As long as the program is still copyleft, it would not be possible
to distribute any non-free derivative.

Now you could argue that if a large part of the codebase
is permissively licensed, the rest could be easily rewrite to produce
a proprietary work.  While that is true, the viral property
of copyleft would render this practically impossible, as the chance
of the same parts of guix is contributed solely by people preferring
permissive licenses is really low considering the total number
of contributors.

I understand the fear of a copyleft work being tainted,
it is just irrational in this very case.  On the other hand,
encouraging patches under any GPL-compatible license would put
unnecessary burdens on the maintainers to document which snippet
to be under what license.  This is even beyond the scope of REUSE
which would optimistically already take days to implement for guix.

For this reason, I think it is a reasonable ask for contributions
to be under the same license and authors can self-publish the patch
under a different license if they wish to.  As mentioned, those hunks
will not stay permissive forever in guix anyway, nor that guix
owes contributors the favor to allocate resources on something
that does not dirrectly support its mission.

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