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There is an open source project, licensed under Apache License 2.0. It is abandoned, so I would like to fork it, do some significant modifications, and publish it again as an open source project, under Apache 2.

The original project does not contain a LICENSE.txt file, but the author wrote licence: Apache License 2.0 in the package information file.

I would like to generate a license file, with this template:

Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

What should I write in the name of copyright owner section? Both my name and the original authors name? What if there were other contributors too? Is it legal to write something like this?

Copyright 2019 John Doe, Jane Doe and others

1 Answer 1

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It is legal to mention multiple people in a copyright line. It is also legal to have multiple copyright lines next to each other.

My recommendation would be to first add a copyright line mentioning the original author, any contributors you can identify and the range of years they worked on the project.

After that, add a new copyright line with the current year and your name, resulting in something like

Copyright 2000-2010 John Doe, Jane Doe
Copyright 2020 Iter Ator

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