Box2D Forums

I'm going to make the sources of my Scala port of JBox2D available, but I have a question about the licensing first:

My understanding is that ports need to be under zlib license as well?


This means I have to have the exact same License.txt file in the source distribution, right? I hope I don't have to keep the whole license in each source file?
If I add my own copyright, that has to go into a different file? Will I end up with two license files? Or three, given that my port is a port of a port?

I think one port used Google Code, misrepresenting the actual license used. I wouldn't want to do that myself, so I guess Google Code is off. Any other suggestions for hosting providers that allow zlib? GitHub? I don't like SourceForge much.

I prefer GitHub for a number of reasons: unrestrictive licensing options, excellent project interactivity, and a richer user experience.

As I understand the license, ports should have two licences. One for the changes made, and then the original one. But generally, people re-use the zlib licence, meaning you don't actually need two. I think If you want to note your authorship of the port, you will need that second zlib licence to prevent people deleting that claim from sources. I wouldn't risk just appending it to the other licence.
Either way, you still have to maintain the misrepresentation clause by stating that it is a port.

I'm pretty sure none of this needs to be done on a per file basis, which I believe is just a convention / convenience against theft.

I've always found the zlib license to be a little strange as regards clauses 2 and 3, which seem almost incompatible - I'd much prefer that it explicitly spelled out how the fact that it was an altered version is supposed to be specified in the license, and allowed alterations for that purpose. It seems that if read literally, you need to mark it as an altered version outside of the license statement (which would put most of the ports in technical violation). The "this notice" is a bit unclear, too, as it doesn't clearly specify what text it relates to.

I wouldn't worry about it much, though. Re: JBox2d, quixote_arg, Erin, and myself are the only ones with any copyright interest, and I can guarantee I don't have the energy to start trouble over anything like this; they're both eminently reasonable, as well, so I'd imagine that as long as you follow the spirit of the license nobody's going to slap you around over the details.