If I Fork an add-on that is listed by the author as MIT licensed, does the copyright header need to be AGPL3 licensed?

Anki Development
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I’m developing a Fork of the add-on Leaderboard since it is no longer under development. (He seems to be quite busy)

According to the author’s Github, Leaderboard is licensed under MIT.
But according to Anki’s Terms and Conditions, add-ons must be licensed under a license compatible with the AGPL3 (GNU AGPLv3 or later).

I don’t know if MIT is compatible with AGPL3, and I have probably never seen a copyright header for MIT-licensed add-ons. I think those are mostly AGPL.

As add-ons extend the computer version, they must be licensed under the AGPL3 or a compatible license. If you do not explicitly state a license, it will be If you do not explicitly state a license, it will be AGPL3.

In this case, which license should the copyright be listed in the header?
This add-on uses PyQt for the UI and uses Django for the server.

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MIT is forward compatible with GPL3, not backward. So you should be able to license it under GPL3. It’s weird that it was licensed under MIT to begin with.

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Thank you very much, I will write it under AGPL3.

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Here is a comprehensive list of licenses that you can use for your project Various Licenses and Comments about Them - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

It’s weird that it was licensed under MIT to begin with.

It is a preference matter. It is completely reasonable to use either a permissive or a strong copyleft license. It all depends on what the author wants to do with their code.

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In this case, and also in the case of most (?) addons, it really isn’t. These addons depend on PyQt (licensed under GPL). You can’t just jump to MIT with such a heavy GPLv3 dependency. But maybe I’m wrong?

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I do actually wonder if GPLv3 licensed libraries, which are activated as a project dependency through a certain feature flag (optional), actually forces the whole project to be GPLv3. My first thought is that the project isn’t really that dependent on the library, so it can be licensed under MIT? Dunno. :thinking:

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These addons depend on PyQt (licensed under GPL)

Good point. You’re right

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