Pash is an open source reimplementation of Windows PowerShell. It was released in 2008, and has been idle since then. I would like to take up the mantle.
It’s not clear what the license is. There is no LICENSE file or license details in the code.
The only reference to a license I can find is on this page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pash/ where it says:
“License: BSD License, GNU General Public License (GPL)”
But I’m not sure if I can take that as authoritative.
I have tried to contact the author but he has not responded.
I would hate to proceed with this project and later discover that I am violating a license, and have the project crippled as a result.
2
You can take that as authoritative as far as the original author considered it.
During project registration on SourceForge, you have to choose a license and you have to elaborate on what your project is and what you intend to do with it. Non-OSS projects aren’t allowed on SourceForge and only admins of a project can change the license categorization, so you can be pretty sure that only the author could have set this.
Not having a license file in your source tree is really bad idea as it leads to confusing situation. If the project ever got removed from SourceForge, there will be no way of finding out about its license. I would recommend that your first commit should be clarifying this.
Do you know that SourceForge has procedures for taking over abandoned projects? You can also open a support ticket with SourceForge asking them about possible license changes in the past.