Hypothetical licensing question

4 réponses [Dernière contribution]
ssdclickofdeath
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 05/18/2013

If I modify program foobar, which is GPL licensed, how should the copyright/license text look? If program X is licensed like this:

Copyright (C) 2004 John Jones

Foobar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

And I want to release my version under the GPL version 3, or any later version, should (and can) I change the text to:

Copyright (C) 2004 John Jones
Copyright (C) 2013 ssdclickofdeath (my real name, instead)

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

ssdclickofdeath
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 05/18/2013

>If program X is licensed like this:

I meant program foobar.

lembas
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 05/13/2010

I believe that's exactly what you should do. If you find yourself in a more complex situation, you can get expert advice from name at domain

ssdclickofdeath
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 05/18/2013

I suppose I'll learn programming soon, and I want to know how to do the licensing properly.

jxself
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/13/2010

Yep, in that example you're adding your copyright notice and also upgrading to v3 of the GPL, which was allowed since the original person published it as v2-or-later.