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License Selection Policy

This document captures the criteria used to select licenses for dual-licensed third-party dependencies in GPL-2.0-or-later projects. Apply these rules when updating NOTICE.md or evaluating new dependencies.

Note: This project is a WordPress plugin and is therefore licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later. The compatibility rules here are the inverse of an Apache-2.0 project — see the Apache-2.0 policy in data-viz-api for the other context.

Quick Reference

License options Choose Reason
GPL-2.0 / BSD-3-Clause GPL-2.0 Consistent with GPL ecosystem
GPL-2.0 / MIT GPL-2.0 Consistent with GPL ecosystem
Apache-2.0 / GPL-2.0 GPL-2.0 Consistent with GPL ecosystem
LGPL / anything LGPL Weak copyleft; keeps more freedoms
MIT or BSD only No choice needed Always compatible with GPL

Compatible Licenses (no documentation required)

These licenses are unconditionally compatible with GPL-2.0-or-later and require no justification in NOTICE.md:

  • MIT
  • ISC
  • BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, BSD (informal)
  • Apache-2.0 (compatible with GPL-2.0-or-later via the "or later" clause)
  • GPL-2.0, GPL-2.0-or-later, GPL-3.0, GPL-3.0-or-later
  • LGPL-2.1, LGPL-2.1-or-later, LGPL-3.0, LGPL-3.0-only
  • MPL-2.0 (FSF confirmed compatible with GPL)
  • CC0-1.0, Public Domain
  • 0BSD, Unlicense

Licenses That Require Documentation

Document in NOTICE.md if present, even if compatible:

License Reason to document
GPL-2.0 (without "or later") Compatible but worth noting the version constraint
Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception Unusual form; clarify the exception doesn't affect compatibility
MPL-2.0 Less common; confirm compatibility explicitly
"SEE LICENSE IN LICENSE" Ambiguous; verify and document actual license
BSD (informal, no version) Clarify it's BSD-2 or BSD-3

Incompatible Licenses (must not be bundled into plugin output)

These licenses are not compatible with GPL-2.0-or-later and must not appear in runtime/bundled dependencies:

License Why incompatible
EPL-1.0, EPL-2.0 Copyleft terms conflict with GPL
CDDL-1.0, CDDL-1.1 Copyleft terms conflict with GPL
JSON License "Good, not Evil" clause incompatible with any copyleft
Proprietary / Commercial Cannot be redistributed under GPL

Dev-only exception: Incompatible licenses in build tools or test runners that are never bundled into the plugin output do not create a distribution conflict, but should still be documented in NOTICE.md.

WordPress-specific rules

  • All WordPress plugins must declare "license": "GPL-2.0-or-later" in package.json and include a GPL-2.0-or-later LICENSE file.
  • Standalone CLI tools in this monorepo (e.g. create-wp-customizer, upgrade-wp-customizer) are not WordPress plugins and may use MIT.
  • Template scaffolding packages may use ISC or MIT.