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<title>EoS tool/patch licensing</title>
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<p>First things first: IANAL. I've done some research, but <strong>none of this is legal advice.</strong> If I've made a mistake, please <em>politely</em> let me know. </p>
<p>Second thing second, my source that I've based most of my interpretation on is <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CombinePublicDomainWithGPL">a single answer from the GPL FAQ</a>. Maybe I could have just linked to that instead of making this page, but GNU makes it obnoxiously difficult to find the relevant information. I had to spend hours researching this, and I don't want to inflict that pain on anyone else. I hope that this page will allow you to spend less time legal-ing and more time hacking: the thing we're all here to do. </p>
<p>I'm an Explorers of Sky ROMhacker. Most of the libraries used for modifying Explorers of Sky (namely, <a href="https://github.com/SkyTemple/skytemple-files">skytemple-files</a> and <a href="https://github.com/RoadrunnerWMC/ndspy">ndspy</a>) are licensed under <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html">GPLv3</a>. This means that if I use any of their code in my own tools/patches (this <em>includes</em> just using them as an import), I am legally required to release my own tool/patch under GPLv3. I personally find this annoying, but I'll spare my angry ramblings for a footnote (angry rambling footnote coming soon). </p>
<p>I personally <em>do not care</em> what people do with my code, so long as I receive credit for my work. I do this as a hobby, I don't care about money. From what I've found, I <em>am</em> allowed to license my source code separately. </p>
<p>That being said, for my Explorers of Sky hacking tools/patches, I have chosen to license my source code under the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License">MIT</a> license. What this means is that while the distribution itself is under GPLv3 (by requirement), you may use my code under MIT, as long as you also follow the licenses of any used libraries. This means that <strong>
<em>if</em>
</strong> you were to remove any usage of GPLv3 dependencies from my code (which, admittedly, is easier said than done), you may do whatever you please with it without being bound by GPLv3. </p>
<p>For my ASM patches in particular, only the <em>patch handlers</em> (the patch.py files) use GPLv3. This <em>does</em> mean that the skypatch as a whole is distributed under GPLv3, but the individual ASM files do <em>not</em> have that restriction. You can redistribute <em>that</em> code freely under the MIT license, such as by applying them in a ROMhack. The skypatch file is ultimately just a tool for applying the ASM code, so just because you use one of my skypatches does not mean you suddenly have to license your entire hack under GPLv3. That probably wouldn't even be possible.</p>
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