How should I append my license on file headers in case BSD 3-Clause to Apache 2.0?

Question

[0] From my understanding via http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html that to ASF/Apache 2.0, BSD 3-Clause is a Cat-A license, thus I could include a BSD 3-Clause upstream project under my Apache 2.0 licensed project.

[1] For code file headers, on those that come from the BSD 3-Clause licensed project, I could add my copyright lines on top of the existing BSD 3-Clause with Apache 2.0.

Are [0] and [1] correct? If they are correct could you please help point me some examples on doing so? If incorrect, could you please help hint and guide me on how to do it properly?

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what are you trying to do? Include as dependencies, link, copy-paste, distribute as binary, ...? The link you have referenced is only for "Apache Software Foundation projects"; is that what you are working on? Is there any addnl info you can give us so that we can accurately assess your situation and think about an answer? – by Martin_in_AUT

Sorry I didn't put it clearly, our product is open-source in apache 2.0 and now we will include this component (in BSD 3-clause) with our own folk, where our copyright with apache 2.0 will be appended, there will be also binary distributions.

Answer 1

The license compatibility of BSD-3 and Apache in your case is OK. I am sure you are aware of this graphics which appears in different versions all over the place.

If you don't change the BSD-3 files then you should just leave them intact (and leave them in their existing license) and if you have not changed them then please don't add your copyright to them. If you are only copying parts of the BSD-3 project, then be sure to include the license.txt (or other file) which contains the license, copyright and other attribution notices!

Where you change the BSD-3 licensed files or copy code into your project, you need to fulfill condition 1 of the BSD-3 license.

When you distribute binaries you need to fulfill condition 2 of the BSD-3 license for any BSD-3 code you have used, regardless if you modified it or not. That is not much different from the requirements in section 4 of the Apache License. You can put the information for both parts into one single file.

Where you have files with different license terms within your project, it is helpful to have clarity in the header of each file. Please consider using the SPDX Format for that.