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If I fork someone's else repository (say, under my brand), for instance when I need the code for another, my own bigger project consisting of a number of such repositories, would it be preferred to send a message to an owner about such intention? I mean, should I inform him or her that now it will be under "my brand", possibly with few changes?

Let's assume the repository's code is under the MIT licence.

forsberg
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    The licence is more important than whether the project is on github. – Kasper van den Berg Jan 04 '18 at 18:53
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    Are you asking what the right thing to do is, or the legal thing? I would think that the right thing to do would be self evident, and this site isn't designed to give legal advice. – Bryan Oakley Jan 04 '18 at 19:02
  • I'm asking about the typical routine on github when doing this, not about a legal thing. Say for instance I need a repository which makes some string processing but does not handle all the languages possible. I want to make sure it won't be removed from github. So I fork this repo and change it, and then add it to my other project in the github. So now it seems like it was "my" repo, though only few changes was done by myself. I wonder whether such a permission from the owner would be something expected on github, or people usually don't care about it when publically sharing their repos? – forsberg Jan 04 '18 at 19:34
  • My understanding of forking is that Github (and its users) consider this a routine operation. In other words, it's the first thing you do, especially if you intend to submit a pull request to the original project. Your "branding" or other use of the code doesn't really have much to do with forking. That has more to do with ordinary etiquette and software licensing. In other words, you don't need any permissions merely to fork someone's repository. For more information on forking, read https://guides.github.com/activities/forking/ – Robert Harvey Jan 04 '18 at 20:18

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There is no need to inform the original maintainers when you fork their repository. That information is actually visible to anyone on github

What you can't do is change the copyrights or licenses on the code or claim in another way that you wrote the code.

What is considered polite is

  • to contribute your changes in the cloned repository back to the original project
  • to mention in the readme file of your top-level project which external libraries you are using and which of those you made changes to in order to let them work fine with your project
Bart van Ingen Schenau
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