Advice on redistribution of a SW licensed under GPL v2+

Joel Sherrill joel.sherrill at oarcorp.com
Wed Sep 30 15:40:28 UTC 2015



On September 30, 2015 10:38:05 AM CDT, Gedare Bloom <gedare at rtems.org> wrote:
>SAeeD,
>
>You're right this is off-topic and you may try to look for a better
>answer by asking on a forum like stackexchange. The basic idea for
>re-distributing GPL code though is you just copy the original code
>as-is (save a copy of it), and then you can release modified versions
>under gpl2 without a problem. If anyone asks, you have to provide the
>license, original code and your modifications if you distribute a
>binary. On GitHub you can just "Fork" the project and pile your
>commits on to your fork. I would not add anyone else's copyright, but
>you may add your own if you make substantial changes. You should also
>consider how you can merge your work with the upstream Slingshot.

+1 merging into the upstream should be your goal. This means you don't have a fork to maintain and the code will not bitrot as they move forward.

>Gedare
>
>On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Saeed Ehteshamifar
><salpha.2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> As far as I understood GPL by skimming the FAQ, I can redistribute a
>> repository which is licensed under GPL v2, as long as I keep the
>references
>> to the original authors.
>> 1. Am I right on this understanding?
>> 2. How should I keep the references to orig when there is no
>Copyright
>> Notice on top of each file? Should I add them manually or only refer
>to orig
>> in my LICENSE file?
>> 3. How should I deal with files from orig that don't have Copyright
>Notice
>> and have been modified by me? May I add my name and Copyright Notice
>on top?
>>
>> This (Slingshot) is the original repository I want to redistribute,
>again
>> under GPL v2+.
>>
>> Sorry if this is not the right place to ask such questions but I
>thought
>> RTEMS guys are experienced in this legal stuff and can quickly help
>me.
>> Slingshot is also going to be a fault injection tool for RTEMS. ;)
>>
>> Thanks in advance!
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
>> SAeeD
>>
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--joel



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