Question: Question:
I have a Ruby script posted on GitHub that seems to have been created by another person and modified by the publisher from what he published under GPL v2.
I was interested in the following three points.
- There is no
gpl.txt, and the source header states GPL in a short document. - The text of the Copyright (and the name of the creator) is the same as the original person, and there is no modification information.
- The version remains the original.
The questions are as follows.
- Regarding 1., is it not necessary to have
gpl.txt? There is a short statement that it is based on GPL v2. - Regarding 2., is it better to keep the name of the original creator and state that there was a change by Modified by … etc.?
- As for 3., is it better to change from the original version such as "v2.1.3-mod" as a modified version?
When I was in a position to make it public, I was asking a question because there was a part that seemed to get caught.
Answer: Answer:
For GPL v2, the following text must be included in the source code.
* Please note that the address of the Free Software Foundation changes from time to time.
Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program 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 General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
At the time of modification, it is essential to describe the history of changes (date and time and name).
There is no regulation about the version (each person just attaches it arbitrarily), but if it is open source, it is kinder to the user to keep the version different.
I'm sure some people will come to search the source using that version as a key (I often use that as a guide).
Source: