I have spent a lot of time examining the various (major) software licenses and ultimately have decided upon using the MIT Licenses for my open source projects, and the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RSL) for my proprietary projects.
Not knowing much about IP law, I have three simple questions that I haven’t been able to find answers to:
- At the top of each source file that I want to protect, I need to place a copy of the appropriate license (MIT/MS-RSL), yes?
- If so, then in this license notice, do I have to acknowledge that I am using the MIT or MS-RSL licenses? Or is it fine to just copy-n-paste the licenses in, as-is? In other words, do I need to say:
SOFTWARE LICENSE NOTICE - MIT LICENSEor can I just writeSOFTWARE LICENSE NOTICE? - Is it “okay” (legally enforceable) to just place a link to a URL (where an EULA lives) instead of pasting in the same software license over and over again, at the top of every single source file? It would be nice to just have this:
// SOFTWARE LICENSE NOTICE
// This software and associated files is licensed. Please visit:
// http://www.example.com/my-license/latest
// for full details.
That way, http://www.example.com/my-license/latest could always contain the latest license I want the source file(s) to be protected by. So if I switch from MIT to, say, APL, no code changes/rollouts are necessary. Is this legally-sound? Thanks in advance!
4
You should either
- include a copy of the complete license in the source file (this is easy with short licenses like BSD or MIT), or
- if the license is too long for inclusion, distribute a copy of the complete license together with your source files and link to it from your source files.
See here for how to do this with the GPL.