[Solved] Question about licensing

Question

Hello all,
I'm not sure if this is the right section, but I thought this at least fits better than the Programming subforum.
I am currently working on a volumeicon meant to be in the system tray. Initially, I started out with Fogobogo's gtk-vol which is licensed under the BSD license.
However, the code has now substantially changed. I would go so far as to say that I only kept some function and variable names, other than that you won't see the relation between the two programs. But still, my code is based on it. Thus, my question: do I need to include the BSD license or am I now free to use whatever license I want? (GPL) Or: should/could I use both?
For the record, in the initial program, Fogobogo did not state the usual Copyright (C) Fogobogo 2011. Does this matter any?
Thanks in advance!
Last edited by Unia (2013-07-17 13:35:33)

Answer 1

Unia wrote:For the record, in the initial program, Fogobogo did not state the usual Copyright (C) Fogobogo 2011. Does this matter any?
This doesn't matter at all.  There used to be a requirement for such a notification, but that has long since been removed.  Copyright is now implied.
If there was any doubt, the copyright is clearly asserted by providing a license (BSD in this case).
But a more fundamental question is why you would want to cheat someone out of their due credit.  You seem to be talking of formalities of how much the code has changed - this seems to focus too much on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law (actually it may violate the letter of the law too).  If fogobogo's work was a noteworthy inspiration for your own, that should be noted.  Legality is only one issue, giving credit to the work that inspired/guided/helped you along the way is just the right thing do do.
Take a look at my copyright notice in alopex for example.  N. Welch (TinyWM) is the only one I took any actual code from, and there probably isn't any of it actually left - but it was the starting point on which I build everything else.  It was bootstrap code: I started with that, added a lot, then removed most of what was initially there.  The point is, though, that without Nick's code, I would have never been able to write alopex.  Also he has released TinyWM into the public domain, so I have no official requirement to acknowledge him at all, even if I kept all of his code.  I also credit dwm and i3 authors - I didn't use any actual code directly from those projects, though I studied dwm's code and in inspired the general structure of my code - I never even looked at i3's code, there's just too much of it.
You're asking what you can do - but just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  Err on the side of giving credit to those whose work has contributed to your own, then you be doing the right thing and you'll be pretty much ensured to be 'legal'.
If it were me, I'd use both licenses with the simple note that some of the code originated from, or was inspired by fogobogo's project licensed under the BSD license.
Last edited by Trilby (2013-07-10 12:33:13)