I'm humbly asking about the proper and appropriate steps one should take after making changes to another persons work.
Case:
I use a driver for an outlet that is available under GNU General Public License v3.0. In my case, this driver solved a problem but introduced another. I took it upon myself to adjust the driver I was using and made changes that work great for me - including adding some small things and customizing it so it was specifically hardcoded to work with my brand of outlets using the tools the original developer has provided.
Now, the driver could help others and I feel that publishing the driver would be a good thing. My problem is I don't want to take any credit away from the original developer (who is galaxies away from me skill wise) and I don't want to create a situation where if something is wrong, it comes back at him.
What is proper and appropriate behavior on my part to a) release my modified version of his work b) be sure that all licensing is followed and upheld c) be clear on attribution?
I'm also concerned about attribution - what if the developer wants no part of it?!?!
I'm heading out for the weekend - so I won't be responsive to the topic for a few days but I look forward to any/all guidance on this matter... this is new territory for me.
Submit your changes as a pull request to the original developer on GitHub.
The License dictates requirements, mostly Attribution. Common Courtesy covers much of the rest. You don't give a lot of history, but I'd also suggest a PR (Pull Request) to offer what Open Source has always touted, collaboration. It sounds as if you've determined that a fork is the next step. The original author can't both pick a License that dictates attribution and then say s/he wants no part of other's work from an attribution standpoint.
Meet the requirements of the License, meet the requirements of common courtesy (offer your work as an enhancement to theirs via PR) and then fork if that doesn't achieve the results.
The ONLY complaint(s) I've read over the years on this forum is "theft" - where an author says that another stole the work, but specifically meaning they didn't include attribution.
Isn’t this the answer? The licensing terms should specify what’s required re: distributing modified versions of code originally released under the license by someone else.
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