LGPL licensing and modifying existing code [closed]

Question

I found a few questions related to this around here but not exactly what I need. I'm working on a product that uses several LGPL licensed products that I modified and my own code as well. I want to release the product under a LGPL license, I suppose that's fine.

Now, regarding modyifing the code, I have a few questions. Each file contains comments in the header related to the author/product and so on. Should I leave that there and add notes under that regarding the changes made? If so, what about heavily modified files? Also, do I need to have any file that keeps track of all changes? (that sounds like a lot of work)

I would gladly kep the header of the files with the original author intact and add in myself and changes to the file, but is that ok according to the LGPL license? And the last thing, if I'm using the original product as a codebase for my own and I rename files and such, do I edit the original comments to match the new filenames?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Should I leave that there and add notes under that regarding the changes made?

Whatever you do, leave the copyright and license notice(s) intact and don't misrepresent code that you didn't write as your own work. What I sometimes do is add my own copyright notice right above the one from upstream. That makes it clear that I touched the software the last time, so I'm to blame for the bugs.

Also, do I need to have any file that keeps track of all changes? (that sounds like a lot of work)

Put it on an open source code hosting website such as GitHub. That's a good idea anyway, regardless of whether you legally need it. (I don't think you do, but read the LGPL carefully; you have to be able to supply source code for any binary release you did. If you distribute the source code along with the binaries, it should be fine.)

I am not a lawyer.