GPL 3 license

[BradleyHill]

Was the move to "license": "GPL-3.0-or-later" intentional. Sullying cspell-lib as now contains GPL-3 dependencies. Regards.

[Jason3S]

@BradleyHill,

Thank you for the question.

There are two different things going on:

1. cspell-lib license is MIT and there is no intention to transfer it to GPL-3. Because it only references libraries that are GPL-3, it does not need to become GPL-3. The cspell-lib is not a derivative work. See Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation. Since the spell checker refers to the dictionaries, but does not package or bundle the dictionaries, it does not need to be GPL-3. On the other hand, Code Spell Checker - Visual Studio Marketplace does need to be GPL-3 because it bundles the dictionaries.
2. Some of the dictionaries MUST be GPL-3 because they are derived from other GPL-3 work. Related to Review Licenses for each of the dictionaries #441 and Use of Medical Terms Dictionary Violates GPLv3.0 #440. As each dictionary is reviewed, the license is updated as appropriate.