Hi,
If i take code from public repository and the license text is as follows.
" ## Copyright (c) 2011, XYZ ## All rights reserved.
## Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without ## modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: ## Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright ## notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. ## Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright ## notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the ## documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. ## Neither the name of the <organization> nor the ## names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products ## derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
## THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY XYZ ''AS IS'' AND ANY ## EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED ## WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE ## DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL XYZ BE LIABLE FOR ANY ## DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ## (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE. "
Now i make changes to the code and plan to re-distribute, the license text says " Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice", so in my license I still have to maintain "Copyright (c) 2011, XYZ" ?, or can i change it to or include "Copyright (c) 2011, MyOrganisation" ?
Also can the disclaimer statement that "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY XYZ" be edited to include the new contributor/contributors name.
Does making changes to Copyright or Disclaimer break the license,
Thanks Sandeep.
On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 21:01 +0530, Sandeep Pillai wrote:
Also can the disclaimer statement that "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY XYZ" be edited to include the new contributor/contributors name.
Does making changes to Copyright or Disclaimer break the license,
looks like BSD license. you can add your info to the original as - modified by you, your additions copyright to you. Actually most BSD licenses normally do not pollute the code - it is enough to put the license in a separate file in the root of the project. There is usually a credits file and an authors file where additional copyright and credit info is given. Otherwise the licensing details will soon spread over several pages and you will have to do a lot of scrolling to even find the code.
2011/4/4 Sandeep Pillai cy7287@gmail.com:
Now i make changes to the code and plan to re-distribute, the license text says " Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice", so in my license I still have to maintain "Copyright (c) 2011, XYZ" ?, or can i change it to or include "Copyright (c) 2011, MyOrganisation" ?
You will have it as:
Copyright XYZ Inc. 2011 Portions Copyright ABC Ltd. 2011
or a variant thereof.
Also can the disclaimer statement that "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY XYZ" be edited to include the new contributor/contributors name.
Yes. Now you are doing the providing. So this will become "This software is provided by ABC".
Does making changes to Copyright or Disclaimer break the license,
Well, as a general rule, no. But there might be cases where this could happen. For example, an author can release software under a non-perpetual license that expires when a copyright assignment happens. In which case, a change to copyright might automatically invalidate the license.
Binand
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Binand Sethumadhavan -
Kenneth Gonsalves -
Sandeep Pillai