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I am confused about choosing a license for my project. I have read some resources like Open Source Initiative and Choosealicense.com, though.

My project is a mobile application for Android. Now, it's already on public repository. Details of technology (software or plug-in) I used on this project are:

  • Mobile application and Front-end framework are under MIT License
  • Plugins under various licenses, MIT License, Apache 2.0 License, and GPL v3 License.

I have been thinking that GPL v3 license will fit my project because, as far as I know, we can't put my project under another license if we used GPL v3 licensed plugins.

I doubt it very much. I just used the technologies above to support my project, I don't modify it.

What kind of license should I use?

1 Answer 1

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Check the GPL Compatible Licenses List.

As far as I know, if your project does not depend on GPL code to work, then you can use whatever license you choose. Note that plugins are not (or should not) be considered as dependencies of your project to work, as plugins add or modify functionality.

So if your core dependencies are already MIT, then go MIT and add a COPY file stating which plugins and what licenses each use only to inform others what code is covered under which license.

UPDATE After re-reading the question, it seems like said plugins are not plugins for the resulting project, but are needed by the project to work instead. In which case yes, you are bound to make your project GPL.

Here https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html yoy will find various texts which might help you understand better how GPL works.

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    This is a good answer, I would only add that if the GPL "plug-in" is not a plug-in, but actually a dependency, then OP would have to license the whole project under GPL due to its viral nature. It's ok to do this, in this case, because the MIT license permits sublicensing. To be clear though, I would personally try to stick with MIT if I wasn't required to use the GPL.
    – RubberDuck
    Sep 27, 2015 at 12:08
  • Thank you @RubberDuck I thought the plugins where used to enhance the resulting project.
    – E. Celis
    Sep 27, 2015 at 17:40

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