1

I'm about to release a project of mine that I'm really proud of under the GNU GPL and I have some questions:

  1. Should one attach a copyright notice on each and every source code file from their project? I think it's a bit ridiculous to claim copyright on a 3 line abstract class. Should I attach a copyright notice only to really important source code files?
  2. Can I not attach the whole standard thingy? Because it's big and bulky and gets in the way... If so, is the variant below ok/enough?

    Copyright year firstname lastname. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

1

1 Answer 1

2

Near the beginning of every file there should be a copyright notice and the following statement (change Foobar to your program's name):

This file is part of Foobar.

Foobar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

Foobar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Foobar.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

You should also include a copy of the full license text somewhere in the distribution of your program.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html

Apparently, 3 line classes are no exception...

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.