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Software Engineering

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    +1 for not putting the whole license boilerplate. I just use one line: Copyright YYYY First Last. Subject to the XYZ license. Commented Aug 18, 2012 at 21:40
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    A lot of companies like to have a copyright line because they want to do "license management". In other words: check for something GPL'ish that was copied from the internet. Basically they scan the source code for a copyright line - which is really just the first line that contains "Copyright" / "(c)". So that line should contain the copyright holder (the author or company) and a hint if it is free software or not. Therefore @mk12 is about right on what a minimum should look like. Because truth is -> any second or third line will never be known anywhere else than in the source code. Commented May 18, 2017 at 18:10
  • It would be nice if for <license> you include the version number. LGPL 2.1 was a nice protective shield for the open source developer. GPL 3.0 is a virus that attempts to consume all. Commented Jun 20, 2019 at 18:13
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    Quick tangent: The point of GPL licenses is to protect the user of the software, not the developer. If you want "protection" as a developer, use MIT (disclaimer of warranty). GPL "infects" other parts of a system to combat a work-around which was used to violate the software freedom of the user, by firewalling sections of GPL'ed code from the rest of the system. If you don't care about your users' software freedom in the first place, then (L)GPL is the wrong choice. Commented Feb 21, 2024 at 5:14