New author continuing work on "dormant" project

Jeremy C. Reed reed at reedmedia.net
Mon Sep 22 20:48:16 UTC 2008


On Mon, 22 Sep 2008, Charles Daniels wrote:

> I am picking up development on a project that has been dormant for a few
> years. The copyright holder has given me full admin/developer privileges on
> his existing project (housed at sourceforge.net). I will be adding support
> for current standards.
> My question is, how do I handle the license text both in new files that I
> will be adding as well as in old files that I modify? In particular, the
> copyright contains the years 2002/2003 in all of the current files.
> 
> 1. When I modify an existing file, do I add the year 2008 to the list of
> years?
> 2. When I create a new file, do I only specify 2008, leaving 2002/2003 out
> of the copyright?
> 
> The license is BSD.

Depends on the "copyright" line. If it has a different name, then add a 
new line for your new date, for example:

  Copyright (c) 2002, 2004  Original Authors
  Copyright (c) 2008  Your Name

  Redistribution and use .... 

Of course for new file, leave out the old date line unless you 
specifically copied more than a few lines of code.



More information about the License-discuss mailing list