LicenseHound

← All compatibility pages · Articles

Is Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License compatible with GNU General Public License v3.0?

Yes — but the combined work must be released under the more restrictive license.

Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License code can be combined with GNU General Public License v3.0 code without conflict. The combined work, when distributed, must be licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0. The original Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License files keep their notice, but the project as a whole is governed by the stronger copyleft.

About these licenses

LicenseFamilyPatent grant
Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License (WTFPL) permissive No (implicit at most)
GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0) strong-copyleft Yes

Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License: Effectively public-domain; widely used informally but considered legally weak by some lawyers.

GNU General Public License v3.0: GPLv3 adds explicit patent grant + anti-tivoisation; updated copyleft language.

What to do next

If you found this page because you're trying to figure out whether shipping a particular dependency is safe, the answer above is a starting point — not a substitute for reading the actual licenses or talking to a lawyer when stakes are high.

LicenseHound walks every transitive dependency in your repo, maps each to its SPDX license, and flags pairs like this one in PR comments. The CLI is free; the team dashboard is paid.

Notify me when v0.1 ships:

Related