Publishing a script under GPL.

Question

[lakhujanivijay]

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?

Answer 1

[Manuel Landesfeind]

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/>.

Answer 2

[novice]

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.