The Software License Licensing Paradox
Description
An image using the classic 'Philosoraptor' meme format. The meme features a side-profile illustration of a green velociraptor, holding its claw to its chin in a thoughtful pose against a green, geometrically patterned background. The text, written in the typical white Impact font with a black outline, is split into two parts. The top line reads, 'SINCE SOFTWARE LICENSES EXIST,' and the bottom line poses the question, 'UNDER WHAT LICENSE THEIR TEXT IS LICENSED?'. This meme presents a meta-legal, philosophical question that resonates with developers, especially those in the open-source community. It humorously points out the recursive rabbit hole of intellectual property: if a software license is a creative and legal text, it too must be subject to copyright and licensing, creating a seemingly infinite loop. It’s a classic 'shower thought' for tech professionals who deal with the complexities of GPL, MIT, and other licenses
Comments
13Comment deleted
The GPL is licensed under the GPL. If you modify it, your new license must also be open-source - it's a recursive legal function that terminates in a stack overflow of lawyers
The only file CI won’t auto-format is LICENSE - because the GPL’s “verbatim only” clause means the license for the license is the one thing you’re legally forbidden to rewrite
The real nightmare isn't choosing between MIT and GPL - it's realizing that the GPL license text itself is copyrighted by the FSF, creating a bootstrap problem that would make any compiler designer proud. Meanwhile, your legal team is still trying to understand why you can't just 'npm install license-for-licenses'
The real answer is that most license texts themselves are either public domain or licensed under permissive terms - because imagine the nightmare of needing to accept a license agreement just to read the license agreement for your software. It's turtles all the way down, except lawyers made sure to put a floor on it before the recursion caused a stack overflow in the legal system
Meta-compliance tip: the license’s license is basically “copy verbatim, no derivatives” - so the most restrictive thing in your open‑source repo is the LICENSE file
Compliance asked us to add an SPDX tag to the LICENSE for the LICENSE - pretty sure that’s how you trigger recursive general counsel
Open source's bootstrap paradox: the license text that grants freedoms it may not possess itself
GFYPL Comment deleted
yeah but this license is under GFYPL so we can't use it... Comment deleted
just make everything under WTFPL 1.0 Comment deleted
I actually saw an interesting debate about this somewhere (SE?) Comment deleted
Don't remember the conclusion though lol Comment deleted
I think they are usually "you may edit this but only under a different name" Comment deleted