Distributing a .NET Core project under GPL

Question

Although the source code of the most .NET Core components is licensed under a MIT License, the binary files of the .NET Core runtime and other supporting libraries on NuGet are released under a more restrictive license.

iii. Distribution Restrictions. You may not

• alter any copyright, trademark or patent notice in the Distributable Code;

• use Microsoft’s trademarks in your programs’ names or in a way that suggests your programs come from or are endorsed by Microsoft;

• include Distributable Code in malicious, deceptive or unlawful programs; or

• modify or distribute the source code of any Distributable Code so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License. An Excluded License is one that requires, as a condition of use, modification or distribution, that

  • the code be disclosed or distributed in source code form; or

  • others have the right to modify it.

According to the above text from that license, it seems that GPL is an Excluded License.

So I can't distribute a .NET Core project under GPL, or I've misunderstood something?

Answer 1

You have understood things correctly: the GPL and copyleft licenses are explicitly targeted here without naming them. So you cannot redistribute things in a way that would make Microsoft software subject to a copyleft.

Since these are system libraries, you would likely not redistribute them and should not.

But if you are saying that this license is for pre-built binaries and that the sources are MIT-licensed, then use the sources, do not reuse the binaries and be happy. The MIT is considered as compatible with the A/L/GPL licenses. And you could released binaries built from these sources combined with your copyleft-licensed code.