I want to GPL some standalone web pages containing my Javascript/D3.js source code. How to use GNU licenses for your own software says that to distribute source code under the GPL, I should “include a copy of the license itself somewhere in the distribution of your program.”
I could bundle up the web pages into a distribution, e.g. in a github repo, and include
the license file there. However, in practice, I am actually distributing the source files individually: They’re up on the web. It sounds as if should include the entire license in each of the HTML files (e.g. as a comment in the HTML), making the source file five or six times larger.
I’ll of course include a copyright notice, stating that the source is distributed under the GPL, but do I really have to include the entire GPL text in the page source? Can’t I just provide a URL to the GPL?
I was unable to find anything relevant to this question in the GPL FAQ.
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Given you can “link” to the source code:
If you are releasing your program under the GNU AGPL, and it can
interact with users over a network, the program should offer its
source to those users in some way. For example, if your program is a
web application, its interface could display a “Source” link that
leads users to an archive of the code. The GNU AGPL is flexible enough
that you can choose a method that’s suitable for your specific
program—see section 13 for details. source
There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to link to the GPL to avoid the download hit per load for your JS app.
include a copy of the license itself somewhere in the distribution of
your program.
Just means to download and link to the GPL locally within your system; aka website, git, etc.
Where must one put the license notification?
It is sufficient to put the full license notice in the “main” file of
your document. For example, with the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, we
have many files included by elisp.texi. We keep the full notification
in elisp.texi, and in the other files we simply write:@c –-texinfo-– @c This is part of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual. @c Copyright (C) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1999 @c Free
Software Foundation, Inc. @c See the file elisp.texi for copying
conditions.source
Again, this points to it being fine to place the full license notice in a file that’s referenced as needed.
4
FSF actually recommends to use GNU Free Documentation License as a copyleft license for textual works of practical use rather than GNU General Public License (which is mostly for code). And they do that for their own online documentation. But since both of them (GPL and FDL) have similar requirements to include the full text of license in distribution, you probably can follow GNU websites as as example.
For instance, there is a manual for GCC; you could see while the copyriht notice is indeed included in source of every page, the copy of FDL is included once as a separate chapter mentioned in TOC.
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