- What is the legaly correct way to do this? As I understand it,
public domain source can simply be taken as is and re-licensed under the LGPL. Is this correct? Am I allowed to remove the headers in the original file, which state that the code is public domain? How do you generally acknowledge the original author?
Actually, public domain is a legal term meaning without copyright, so we can do whatever we want with the code - change it, cut it into pieces, even claim we made it. There is no public domain license, so to speak, since something in the public can be used without a license.
As a matter of courtesy, however, citing the author in the source is a good idea. This is, of course, assuming that the code actually is in the public domain, and not licensed under something like some forms of BSD, which require acknowledgement in the source somewhere.
-Scott