"Svante Signell" <svante.signell@telia.com> wrote in message [🔎] 1132266914.6146.51.camel@em2.my.own.domain">news:[🔎] 1132266914.6146.51.camel@em2.my.own.domain...
On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 14:05 -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:Justin Pryzby wrote: > Some argue > that *.h, at least for libraries, have no creative content, or are > only API, and thus not copyrightable, but it can't hurt.If it has no creative content, you really should include a statement to that effect. "Written 2005 by Svante Signell; I consider this to have no creative content and to be in the public domain." Otherwise later people may assumethat it does have creative content and that you screwed up and included a file without copyright notices by accident....I know I don't always follow best practices like this because it can be a painto remember to, but it's a good idea.Thank you all for your valuable comments. Should I incorporate the ideas above for header files? Any recommendation about "GPLv2" vs "GPLv2 or later", except for the one proposed: Don't use "or later" since these licence contents are not yet published, hence currently unknown.
You can certainly choose to licence under v2 or later, and man people do. As far as I know only two things can happen. A future version is more restrictive, and somebody forks your code and add changes under only the more restrictive licence. In some cases this could presumably be a bad thing. The other possiblility is that a later version is much less restrictive and allows sombody to use your code in proprietary software.
I would reccomend using the longer version of the statement, minus the 'or later' clause if desired. The longer version makes it clear that warrenties are disclamed, and how to get a copy of the terms of the GPL via snail mail.
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 2 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, write to the Free SoftwareFoundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA