I read the original text of Apache License, Version 2.0 and the explanation in plain English.
OK, I copy a class distributed by The Best Company in the World, their license, and modify the code a bit.
The original file with my changes.
/*
* Copyright (C) 2011 The Best Company in the World
*
* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
* You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
package com.mypackage;
public class MyClass {
private void someMethod() {
// Their code
// My little change
}
}
Then I use MyClass in my application.
- Do I need to replace The Best Company in the World with the name
of my company or with my own name? If not, will my project contain two licenses: theirs and mine? Where to save them in this case? - And as far as I understand, I must distribute my application using
Apache Licence, Version 2.0.
Wikipedia says:
The Apache License is widely, but not universally, considered
permissive in that it does not require a derivative work of the
software, or modifications to the original, to be distributed using
the same license (unlike copyleft licenses – see comparison).
Best Answer
Section 4 of the Apache License 2.0 is quite clear on what you must do when you distribute the changed file:
You must make it clear the the file has been changed. The easiest way is to simply add your copyright after the original ones:
If you did the modifications on behalf of your company, then that is in most cases also the name that you must put on the copyright notice
If you don't distribute the modifications (or not outside your company), you don't have to do anything. Copyright licenses only come into play when distributing a program/library.