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Here is a plugin I wish to redistribute:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/TextAreaResizer

I've written a Jquery plugin that needs the text resizer as a prerequisite. The license type says:

License type: Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License

I did a bit of googling and it said you have to retain all license info, but this plugin doesn't come with any! Can I package a modified version of this (I changed one number in the source) and distribute it with my plugin?

Thanks for any insight

Jimmy Hoffa
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Tom
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1 Answers1

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The BSD license is basically:

  • copyright information
  • a couple of clauses that instruct you to reproduce the copyright information and forbid you to claim the original authors endorse your modifications
  • a disclaimer

I agree it's a little weird that this distribution doesn't contain the license. The download doesn't even include a copyright notice (it just says "created by")!

This is clearly an example where someone didn't take licensing seriously, which is perhaps understandable given that it's such a small amount of code. Personally I would add the BSD license to my derivative and credit the original author as copyright holder of the original work, since that appears what the original developer intended.

Plus it won't hurt to have the BSD disclaimer in your code :)

Deckard
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    Thanks! Can I distribute it with the BSD license but my custom code under a different license? All does all my code need to be BSD? – Tom May 04 '11 at 12:41
  • Your modifications do not have to be BSD licensed, but the code you use requires that you include the BSD license text (copyright, clauses and disclaimer). So you are free to license your modifications differently, but it will result in distributing the code with two licenses. – Deckard May 04 '11 at 13:02