Slightly OT: Licensing questions from a FOSS newb

[Jarrett Billingsley]

"Tyler Knott" <tywebmail at mailcity.com> wrote in message 
news:erj7gi$q3m$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>
>> I've decided to go with an MIT license 
>> (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php).  What I want to 
>> know is if all I really have to do is slap that at the top of all my 
>> source files in a comment block, or if there's something more that I have 
>> to do.
>
> Yeap, that's pretty much all you need to do.  If you really wanted to you 
> could get your code formally copyrighted, but that's not at all necessary 
> since implicit copyrights are just as binding as formal ones (at least in 
> most of the world).
>
> > I mean, that's about all I've ever seen anyone else do.  I just don't 
> > know
> > if putting the text of the license in all my source files is actually 
> > legally
> > binding or what.
> >
>
> Well, technically if the license is invalid then the people you're sharing 
> the source with have *no* legal rights.  What you're doing when you use a 
> "copyleft" license is saying "Okay, I own this work's (in this case 
> code's) copyright and you can use this work if you want but only under the 
> terms of X license(s), otherwise all rights reserved" where X is/are 
> whichever license(s) you choose for your code.  Under most licenses can 
> change the license(s) at any time, though only for your own code (because 
> you don't own the copyright on the code of other contributors).  I 
> recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Copyleft if you want more 
> information.

Cool :)  Thanks for the help!