Re: adding and forking someone else's GPL software - what should i do?

On Mon 21 Nov 2011 07:29:49 NZDT +1300, Robin Paulson wrote:

> reading the GPL, i don't see anything i am obliged to do, but i may
> be wrong in my interpretation.

You are correct, you *need* to do nothing. Not even change the name. A
while back the LaTeX people made their license to allow everyone to do
everything one expects to be able to do with FOSS, except that they also
mandated that forks change the package name to stop all hell breaking
loose. Very sensible, but you wouldn't believe the number of militant
screaming idiots over this (all from debian.org btw!) who saw their
freedom infringed...

I would suggest the main thing is that you keep your users in mind. For
those the minimal name change you suggest is a good idea, and you should
also put your name etc somewhere under help->about. As a user, I would
primarily want to know "how is this different from ...", why was it
changed and by who, and I never spend a lot of time on something that
obvious before I click next.

There's maybe to consider not annoying the original developers too much,
but that's mutual and hey that's what the GPL is for.

HTH,

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann			is list0570 with the domain in header.
http://volker.dnsalias.net/	Please do not CC list postings to me.

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