Privacy Browser Android

Arne contacted me and asked if I had any objections to him creating a forked version of Privacy Browser branded for his services. I told him that he or anyone else was welcome to create a fork as long as he complied with the requirements of the GPLv3+ license. It appears that he was unaware of the requirements of the GPL to maintain all copyright information from the original project in his fork. I have sent him the following email and I would expect that the will rectify the situation.

Arne,

I was looking through the source code of your fork of Privacy Browser and realized that you are perhaps not aware that to be in compliance with the GPL you must retain all the original copyright information. For example, the header of MainWebViewActivity.java should contain something similar to the following:

/* * Copyright © 2018-2021 Arne-Brün Vogelsang <arne@monocles.de>. * * This file is part of monocles browser <https://monocles.de/more&gt;. It is a * fork of Privacy Browser, which is Copyright © 2015-2021 Soren Stoutner * <soren@stoutner.com>. * * Download cookie code contributed 2017 Hendrik Knackstedt. * Copyright assigned to Soren Stoutner <soren@stoutner.com>. * * Privacy Browser is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or * (at your option) any later version. * * Privacy Browser is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the * GNU General Public License for more details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License * along with Privacy Browser. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/&gt;.
*/

The exact wording will vary a bit by the file because they do not all have the same copyright, but the general principle is that all existing copyright information must be maintained.

In About > Licenses similar text should be included. For example:

Copyright
monocles browser copyright © 2018-2021 Arne-Brün Vogelsang. monocles browser is a fork of Privacy Browser, which is copyright © 2015-2021 Soren Stoutner.

Also, the section about Classes should be specific that the modifications to CheckedLinearLayout are copyright Soren Stoutner. And you have incorrectly stated that the modifications to the icons are copyrighted by you, but they are not. The original notations that they are copyright Soren Stoutner, with the correct year for each one, should be reinstated.

In About > Contributors, you need to be careful to clearly differentiate who has contributed to Privacy Browser and who has contributed to the monocles browser fork. I would suggest text similar to the following:

monocles browser Principal Developer
monocles browser is primarily developed by Arne-Brün Vogelsang.

Privacy Browser Principle Developer
monocles browser is a fork of Privacy Browser, which is primarily developed by Soren Stoutner.

Privacy Browser Coders
Thomas Jensen
Hendrik Knackstedt

Privacy Browser Translators
Thiago Nazareno Conceição Silva de Jesus: Brazilian Portuguese
Kévin L.: French
Bernhard G. Keller: German
Francesco Buratti: Italian
Jose A. León: Spanish

Privacy Browser Past Translators
Stefan Erhardt: German
Aaron Gerlach: German

It is not required by the GPL, but as a matter of etiquette, it is considerate to indicate in the app description on F-Droid that monocles browser is a fork of Privacy Browser.

You can add any comments you may have at https://redmine.stoutner.com/issues/741 .