: Is it legal and ethical to remove license notices from third-party code? I want to use third-party code as my front-end framework, for example Bootstrap. In the code for Bootstrap and jQuery,
I want to use third-party code as my front-end framework, for example Bootstrap. In the code for Bootstrap and jQuery, there's a license. For example in boostrap.css:
/*!
* Bootstrap v3.0.3
*
* Copyright 2013 Twitter, Inc
* Licensed under the Apache License v2.0
* www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 *
* Designed and built with all the love in the world @twitter by @mdo and @fat .
*/
/*! normalize.css v2.1.3 | MIT License | git.io/normalize */
Can we remove this text? In order to reduce HTTP requests, we want to make one CSS file so that Bootstrap will be combined with a customize CSS style.
My question is: can we remove this text, and if we do, would we be violating any laws? What should we do and don't do?
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You've really got two licenses there: The Apache License 2.0 and the MIT License.
Both have restrictions that require copyright and other notices to remain intact. As indicated here for the Apache License under Licensing conditions:
in every licensed file, any original copyright, patent, trademark, and
attribution notices in redistributed code must be preserved (excluding
notices that do not pertain to any part of the derivative works); and,
in every licensed file changed, a notification must be added stating
that changes have been made to that file.
And here for the MIT License under License terms:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
This is the reason why you're seeing these notices above. So legally, these notices shouldn't be removed from the works/files in which they're found.
As a benefiter of other people's work, it's also ethical to give them fair credit and honor their licensing terms.
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