Forum Moderators: phranque
I have found a script which says it is licensed under gpl and osd. It has a copyright at the bottom of the page. I have made huge changes to the script - do I have to retain that copyright footer?
Cheers.
Some scripts have a specific "advertizing clause" which obliges you to keep the copyright footer, but this is not compatible with the GPL. You may also require it if you want to get help from the original coders. An example would be the phpBB forum package: it has a copyright notice at the bottom, but you are not required to keep it according to the GPL license. However if you removed the copyright and subsequently asked for help at the phpBB forums, it is extremely unlikely you will get any assistance.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work[my emphasis] under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Read the GPL, it's very clear, it doesn't matter what you did to the code, it's still under the gpl, although I believe you can add your name to the copyright notice as long as you leave the original copyright material intact.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
That's clear enough.
I would keep the copyright in there just so that you know, and anyone else who comes along later, knows that this is not owned by you or your company, and you can't go about reselling it, etc, without infringing on copyrights of the original creator. I'd also keep the original GPL notice int eh source as well, so that it's obvious.
This is all AFAIK, and IANAL. :)
The 4 Freedoms protected by the GPL [gnu.org]:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0) [geeks, LOL, most arrays start with 0, not 1].
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
If you don't want to have to maintain the copyleft notice on gpl'ed code, you can't use gpl code or programs. You can use BSD licensed code if you wan to repackage it and sell it, or whatever, without maintaining the copyright, or not distribute the altered source. OS X is an example of this [bsd licensed freeBSD], so is Apache.
If you don't like the GPL, then don't use gpl protected source code, it's very simple.
I have tried to contact the author to develop it. I would like to redistribute it. Do I have to change the name, or do I call it a fork?
I can appreciate that the original author spent a lot of time on the project before I started using it.
You don't have to contact the original author as long as his / her GPL notice remains intact, but it is considered good form to at least make a decent attempt to reach them, especially if you're going to fork the project. But again, that's just the etiquette. If you can't find the project author, if they appear to have disappeared off the face of the earth, and you really can't locate them, and nobody knows where they are, or if they have dropped all support for the project, etc, it is I believe acceptable practice to simply take the project over, retaining all credits to the original author in the process. And of course adding credit to yourself. That avoids a fork.
If you are creating new standalone modules I believe you can credit yourself on those, but check that with somebody more knowledgeable about the GPL and derivative works than me. Linksys for example made a mistake about this for a router running linux, but after they understood the error they released all the source, and did really well, linux freaks loved their stuff after that.
But you can fork it if you want, that's fine too. OS Commerce, for example, was recently forked into zencart because oscommerce is so bad. But the original authors wanted to keep it as bad as it is. The GPL is a very cool license, spend some time learning about it, reading up on it, you have no choice about using it, so you might as well get comfortable with it now.
The specific questions you asked I don't know the answer to, though they are good questions. Find a forum that has more authority level gpl people on it is my advice, or maybe just email gnu.org directly if you can't find the answer to your question anywhere else, it's real people running it, and you are doing the right thing in how you are approaching this, so there are no problems or things you have to lie about. People will be happy to help you, in other words.
<added>re the OSD, read the definition itself at opensource.org [opensource.org]. I assume that osd stands for the Open Source Definition. It just restates the GPL, more or less anyway.
4. Integrity of The Author's Source CodeThe license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
Rationale: Encouraging lots of improvement is a good thing, but users have a right to know who is responsible for the software they are using. Authors and maintainers have reciprocal right to know what they're being asked to support and protect their reputations.
Accordingly, an open-source license must guarantee that source be readily available, but may require that it be distributed as pristine base sources plus patches. In this way, "unofficial" changes can be made available but readily distinguished from the base source.
This would seem to suggest that you should rename the project, which sounds like it's what you want to do anyway, so it's all good, you're on solid ground, unless you were hoping to release it without having to release your source as well, in which case you're scr##ed, so to speak.
And yes, I have stuff released under the LGPL - Lesser General Public License [gnu.org], which is also worth taking a look at. Make sure you are clear on which version of the GPL the stuff is released under, GPL or LGPL.
