Re: expert advice on publishing software needed

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 06:55:17PM +1100, Jochen Gläser wrote:

First thing, thank you Jochen for contributing to Free Software!  I'll try to
help you out as good as I can.


>    1) Am I allowed to put the files with the macros on the book publisher's
>    website for free download, or can Microsoft object?

Microsoft can make no intellectual property claim on the code you write,
even if you write it using their tools, so you can definitely distribute
those files as you please, Free Software included.


>    2) Do I need to / can I put some Copyleft (or whatever) on it to keep it
>    free, or can it stay there 'forever free' without a license?

You should put a comment on the beginning of every source file stating
the license.  Please find below an example of such comment using the GPL
license.  Even if you want to release that code under the public domain,
you have to make it explicit.  Unfortunately, code with no explicit
license is the less free it can possibly get, because it could be
anything, and you'd risk it being something you can't use at all.

Here is such a license header for the GPL:

   <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
   Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

   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 2 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, write to the Free Software
   Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

This is a standard template you can find in the GPL license itself (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).


Ciao,

Enrico

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <[email protected]>

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