- Obtain a copyright disclaimer from your employer or school.
- Put the appropriate copyright notices in each file.
- Be sure to explicitly specify which license versions users can use.
- Include a COPYING file containing a copy of the GNU GPL or GNU AGPL.
- Add a COPYING.LESSER file containing a copy of the GNU LGPL if you are using it.
- Put a license notice in each file.
- (Optionally) have the program show a startup notification.
- Have the program (if you use the AGPL) suggest copies of the source code.
Example GPLv3:
The copying permission statement (license notice) of each file must come after the copyright notice.
Copyright (C)
For a single-file program, copying permission statement (GPL) to use GPL v3 and later:
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, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. this program 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 this program. If not, see .
For programs with more than one file, it is a good idea to replace “this program” with the name of the program and start the statement with the line “This file is part of NAME”.
The goal of this process is to test the role and privilege manipulation in order to access the resources of a
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 .
This statement should appear at the beginning of each resource file, close to the copyright notices.
Limited GPL when using, “Lesser” the word in all three places "General" put it in front of the word. GNU AGPL when using, “Affero” the word in all three places "General" put it in front of the word.
If the program you wrote interacts with the user from the console, it would be more appropriate to give a warning message like the one below when it is run for the first time:
-Initial Notice-
Copyright (C) This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. this is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
The "show w" and "show c" statements here should be commands in your program that show the appropriate/required parts of the GPL.
If your program has a graphical interface, you should view this information in the About section.
-Affero notice-
If you are publishing the program under the GNU AGPL and interacting with users through a network, the program must also provide the source code to those users.
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