Altering author names in MIT license [closed]

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Some years ago I wrote and released some software under the MIT license.

Recently I noticed that one (or some?) of the forks have altered the leading copyright notice at the top of the license, i.e.

Copyright (c) 2014 <my name>

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software...

to

Copyright (c) 2019 <new author>

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software...

It's just a small tool, but it does kind of feel bad having my name stripped from what was mostly my work.

• Is this something that should be covered by the MIT license?
  • I.e. is removing a name violating the license? It's unclear to me if the MIT "must remain whole" statement includes the copyright part or just the "MIT license" part.
• Did I pick the wrong license?
  • Which should I have chosen to ensure my name remains attached to my work?
• At what point (if ever?) is it appropriate to strip an original authors name from a license?
  • I would assume never barring what would be considered a full rewrite?

Answer 1

Yes, this is covered by the MIT license and you should contact the author of the derivative work to correct the copyright notice.

More precisely, with MIT license, you allow everyone:

to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,

So, someone can modify and enhance your original software. In this case you still own the original software and the new author owns the copyright on his or her modifications (so it's a kind of joint ownership, everyone on the own contribution).

But with MIT you set a condition to do so:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

So, even if that person may claim copyright on his or her modifications, he or she shall sill include your name in the copyright notice, since you still own a part of that code. There are several ways to do so, but the clearest one seems to be:

Copyright (c) 2014 <your name>
Copyright (c) 2019 <new author>

I think this is still the case, even if 90% of the code was rewritten, since you still hold the copyright on the 10% remaining.

Disclaimer: this is not legal advice but my own practical understanding as software professional. For qualified legal advice, you should consult a lawyer or a qualified legal advisor in your jurisdiction.