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Publishing a script under GPL.

I want to publish a script for general public use under GPL licensing. My question is how should I go about it?

I googled about the same and my understanding is:

  1. I should paste the following text in comment section of my script:

    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 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

  2. I should provide a license.txt file containing GPL license terms and conditions along with my script copied from following link: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt

Would these 2 points sufficient? Or do I need to contact somebody from GPL?

script publish
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updated by Manuel Landesfeind Manuel Landesfeind • written by lakhujanivijay lakhujanivijay

2 answers

Actually, you need to have an additional first paragraph (see How to use GNU licenses for your own software):

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 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

That's it. There is no need to contact anyone or to ask for permission.

For single-file-scripts, I personally do not attach the license itself but modify the last paragraph to something like:

You can receive a copy of the GNU General Public License at <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
• 0 views • link
written by Manuel Landesfeind Manuel Landesfeind

Yes, those two points would be sufficient and no, you don't need to contact anybody. This is usually done through Github. Just create and account and upload your script.

• 0 views • link
written by novice novice

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