What are the legal considerations when forking a BSD-licensed project?
- by Thomas Owens
I'm interested in forking a project released under a two-clause BSD license:
Copyright (c) 2010 {copyright holder}
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or
without modification, are permitted provided that the following
conditions are met:
(1) Redistributions of source code must retain
the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the disclaimer
at the end. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer
in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.
(2) Neither the name of {copyright holder} nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.
DISCLAIMER
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
I've never forked a project before, but this project is very similar to something that I need/want. However, I'm not sure how far I'll get, so my plan is to pull the latest from their repository and start working. Maybe, eventually, I'll get it to where I want it, and be able to release it. Is this the right approach?
How, exactly, does this impact forking of the project? How do I track who owns what components or sections (what's copyright me, what's copyright the original creators, once I start stomping over their code base)? Can I fork this project? What must I do prior to releasing, and when/if I decide to release the software derived from this BSD-licensed work?
