[Fedora-legal-list] Re: Fwd: Forking libtar and licensing it as LGPL

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 12/09/2009 09:17 AM, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala wrote:

> Hi All,
> I maintain the libtar package for some time now. However it seems that the upstream author is no longer responding to any patch requests and is also no longer interesting in maintaining the package any more.
> I have therefore forked the code and call it libtar-ng.
> The libtar library is licensed in MIT like license, The license file can be found at:
> http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=libtar-ng.git;a=blob;f=COPYRIGHT;h=2471ec01bf241c48278c181557e5a3919057af21;hb=HEAD
> 
> Now the question is have is:
> 1. Can i fork this code?

Yes.

> 2. If i fork it, do i have to license my forked code as MIT (original license), or can i make it LGPL?

You can make it LGPL, the sublicensing permission from MIT permits this.

> 3. When i fork it, do i have to retain the header (license and author detail) for each file (code) or can i replace it with my own.

Yes, you need to retain the previous copyright information (for each
file). You'll need to change the header to reflect the new LGPL license
as well as the old MIT license. Here's how you should do it:

/*
 * Copyright (c) 2009  Huzaifa Sidhpurwala <huzaifas at redhat.com>
 *
 * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
 * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
 * version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * This library 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
 * Lesser General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
 * License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
 * Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
 * 02110-1301  USA
 *
 * This file incorporates work covered by the following copyright and
 * permission notice:
 *
 *  Copyright (c) 1998-2003  University of Illinois Board of Trustees
 *  Copyright (c) 1998-2003  Mark D. Roth
 *  All rights reserved.
 *
 *  Developed by: Campus Information Technologies and Educational
 *  Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
 *
 *  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
 *  obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
 *  files (the ``Software''), to deal with the Software without
 *  restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
 *  modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
 *  of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 *  furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *
 *  * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
 *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimers.
 *  * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
 *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimers in
 *    the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
 *    distribution.
 *
 *  * Neither the names of Campus Information Technologies and
 *    Educational Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
 *    nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or
 *    promote products derived from this Software without specific
 *    prior written permission.
 *
 *  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
 *  EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
 *  MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
 *  NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE CONTRIBUTORS OR COPYRIGHT
 *  HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
 *  WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
 *  OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
 *  DEALINGS WITH THE SOFTWARE.
 */

Don't forget to include COPYING with a copy of the LGPLv2 in plaintext!

> 4. If i retain the header in the code files, can i add my name to it?

Yes, in fact, you should do this as soon as you have made a
copyrightable change to the codebase.

Hope this helps,

~spot