Managing Copyright Information within a Free Software Project
September 17, 2012
Today, the Software Freedom Law Center published Managing Copyright Information within a Free Software Project, a guide to help developers maintain the license and copyright notices associated with their projects.
From the guide’s introduction:
Nearly every free software project includes two types of legal information with its source code: the license(s) of the code and the copyright notices of contributing authors. As important as it is to maintain this information, it’s not always easy in a collaborative development process. With multiple developers contributing regularly to the code, some information can be left out or buried, and other information can be retained after it is no longer accurate. We wrote this guide to help projects minimize the problems and improve the usefulness of their legal information. It explains the purpose of license and copyright notices, the legal requirements behind them, and the current best practices for maintaining this information in a free software project’s source distribution.
Managing Copyright Information within a Free Software Project is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.