Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have an application and I'm ready to release it into the wild world of the Internet. However, I am a confused of a few things.
Keeping in mind that I am not releasing the source code, must I include a license If I don't want my program copied and claimed someone elses? If yes, then which one?
Also, note that is a non-commercial freelance programmer's application.
Your program is already copyrighted from the moment you create it, and without a license agreement, by default it is illegal to copy or redistribute it without your permission.
License agreements may or may not give you additional rights or protections. You should probably talk to a lawyer specializing in software licensing to discuss what exactly you want in a license, and what a license can and cannot give you. In particular, if you are doing work for a client, you may want specific terms in your contract regarding when copyright assignment occurs.
