licensing for multiple files

[NickJohnson]

Just a quick question about properly applying a license. I'm using the ISC license for my code, which is in a file called LICENSE at the root of the source tree. However, in each source file, I only have a comment saying "Copyright 2010 Nick Johnson", and nothing else, above all of the code. Do I need to put more than this in each file? If so, do I have to include the entire license text (which appears to be the convention on ISC DHCPD), or just a referring statement (like in most GPL software I've seen)?

[stephenj]

When it comes to free advice on licensing, I tend to look at the FSF's resources.

See this page for howto apply a software licence.

[NickJohnson]

I know that the FSF has a specific snippet to put in (because the entire GPL is massive), but what would I need to do with an ISC license? And is it that bad to only have it in a file at the root of the source tree? ~10 lines times 50-100 files is a lot of text, and a reasonable amount of hassle to add, even with grep.

[Brynet-Inc]

The ISC text is fairly small, some people prefer appending it to all files.. others like yourself like keeping it within a LICENSE file.

You must be aware that if you plan on importing code written by other people under a similar licence, they may not like you stripping off their licence, even if only to relocate it.

Declaring your copyright at the top of the file may not be enough, how about the following?

Code: Select all

/*
* Copyright (c) CCYY YOUR NAME HERE <[email protected]>
* ISC licenced, See LICENSE for details.
*/

[Kevin]

From a legal perspective, the LICENSE file should be enough without any header in the source files. But you should consider that if you are not sure about it, those who might want to use your source are unsure about it as well. Which means that your code will be used less than it could have been. So I'd strongly advise to put it in every file, not for legal reasons, but just to be nice to readers.