Hi Aaron,
I found an interesting project protected by Apache-2.0 in github. Now I
want to modify some functions and some new features to develop a new
software based on the original project. Naturally I want to fork it and
start my coding, but there is a confusing thing, should I fulfill the
obligation of *Redistribute with Modification, *especially the 2.nd
term, changelog related.
1. You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works
a copy of this License; and
2. _You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that You changed the files; and_
This is an interesting question.
Firstly, yes, assuming that you're using the GitHub's free service for
F/OSS projects, a condition of use of that service is that you're
willing to distribute every revision of your code meaning that the fork
and any changes to it are immediately distributed by virtue of their
being hosted with GitHub's free service.
Strictly speaking therefore, the first thing that you should do upon
creating a fork is to meet any labelling requirements in the associated
license.
Taking a step back to look at impact, I understand the intended purpose
of that particular clause (and similar clauses in other licenses) to be
to avoid confusion about the identity and origin of a particular copy of
a piece of source code. I'd suggest that there's very little risk of
confusion in the case that you're describing in that the forked version
is generally either a personal tweak (which you won't be promoting) or a
precursor to an upstream pull request. Neither case creates any material
risk of confusion about origin and, in any case, is hosted in a personal
name space which will usually remove all doubt. This suggests that the
many thousands of forks sitting in personal-but-public GitHub
repositories that haven't met this obligation are nonetheless not
creating a material problem.
Obviously if you go on to promote the work as a separate project then it
would be very important to deal with those obligations, and probably
rename the project, replace branding, etc.
- Roland
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