How to license programs under GPL v3?

Question

After a bit of research, I found that there are different types of licenses, depending on the nature of the software, and the original license that was used for it.

Considering my scripts are very small (few hundreds of lines, sometimes less), do I even have to use a license (for example GPL v3) ? And if so, how do I do that (again, for GPL v3)?

Licensing still confuses me a lot. I spent several hours trying to understansd how it works, and watching some videos, but I still have no clue on how to use them.

Can anyone explain how to use the licenses (I already know how they work, and how some of them work), but I have no idea how to include them (do I just copy-paste it, or do I have to make changes ?)

If you have any good links where I can read about it (please don't post random links from google, I already went throught a lot of them), it would be appretiated.

Answer 1

Take a look at how others do it:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/master/LICENSE

It's literally a file called LICENSE in the main folder of source control. Sometimes people will additionally also mention the type of license used in the readme. I have also seen people add a license as a comment inside the code itself, for single-file projects etc. You just copypaste it yeah. You can also write your own but you really shouldn't.

Do you need a license? Probably not. For your average 100 line script nobody will care; nobody will make money off your work and so nobody will be dragged to court if your code is being misused. (Unless you are huge, read about the Oracle v. Google "rangeCheck" case from 2012, it's pretty funny)

If your code is not licensed at all, the terms fall under local jurisdiction and every country has different rules. Which is absurd on the internet and it gets messy so no business ever touches unlicensed code.

Necessary disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer and I could be wrong etc.

Answer 2

Schindlabua it's just some useless small code.

I was more conserned about me using a framework without a proper license, than about others using my code somewhere else.

Answer 3

Try to contact with this website
http://softwarefreedom.org/

Answer 4

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/gpl-3.0/
This section is the very last section of the terms of the license.

Answer 5

If that framework has a GPL licence or similar attached to it you should add a copy of that license aswell yes. I think the courts are pretty lenient on what is considered "proper licensing", the framework usually has a license file and so if you copy the framework you've already included a copy of their license. And I think that's fine (but again, not a lawyer etc.)