gpl question

[tucolino]

i'm looking into writing a glp application. i have found lots of work already done in an existing gpl'ed application. however, the existing one is written in another language. in other words, i would be porting many of the existing algorithms.

how does this work in terms of credit? do i have to state exactly what i extracted from the existing app? of course, i will mention the people responsible for the code i ported. what i would like to know is what the correct way is. i may modify a lot of it to accustom it to my needs.

any one out there know what the formal way of doing this is?

thanks,

tuco

[kam]

Since you are not using the code itself but rather the algorithms represented by that code, it is a bit unclear. I guess the best thing to do would be to simply ask the author, who will probably say its okay consider he/she already GPL'd his/her code.

[hammer123]

I think this is probably more than sufficient: when you want to use some of the code in the program copy it to your program. If you change it put a comment below with the original code. For the copyright say foo is copyright <year> <your name> <original developer's name>.

[tucolino]

ok great. both are sensible responses. thank you.

tuco

[El_Cu_Guy]

Basics features of copyright:

The right to control duplication protects the owner of a software product against copying without permission from the copyright owner. It also protects the owner from unauthorized translation of a productís code to a different programming language. Copyright also protects the owner against the use of codeís structure, organization, etc. in a similar program.

Basic features of Copyleft:

Copyleft contains the normal copyright statement, asserting ownership and identification of the owner. However, it then gives away some of the other rights implicit in the normal copyright: it says that not only are others free to redistribute this work, but they are also free to change the work. However, after using copyleft permission, an individual cannot claim to have written the original work.

[hammer123]

not sure that is on topic or right but I will comment no further