To what extent do you quote the author in a project fork?

Question

I have forked a Java project recently but am a little confused when trying to conform to its GPL. How often should you quote the source?

Right now I've noted that this forked the original project and linked to it in the home page, but should I also add it to the Javadocs as well?

 /**
 * ...
 * @author  Originally by Someone
 *          <a href="http://project.com"&gt;http://project.com&lt;/a&gt;
 *          <p/>Forked by Leon Blakey as part of the MyProject project
 *          <a href="http://myproject.com"&gt;http://myproject.com&lt;/a&gt;
 */

To me that seems a little verbose, and then what do I do with the files that I didn't touch or the original author didn't create? Or is such a linkback even necessary?

Answer 1

You can fork any GPL's project. The GPL is a copyright license designed to use copyrights to not restrict, but to grant more rights (copyleft).

All you need to do is maintain the copyrights on each class. The original developers may have copyright on the source files, but they have given everyone the exclusive right to use/copy as long as your derivative code is also under the GPL. Your new classes can have your copyright string on them.

Also, make sure the GPL header is at the top of each source file. You can find that on the FSF's site. There is not a need to have a forked from in the javadocs.

Have fun and code away :)