this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
17 points (90.5% liked)

Open Source

38664 readers
432 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi, I am currently working on a website I plan to release under the GPL3 license. I was wondering what copyright notice I should put in the footer of the web page. The notice I currently have is "Copyright 2023 ", but I do not know if this conflicts with the GPL licence. Should I change it to something like "Copyright 2023 contributers"?

top 4 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

The notice has nothing to do with the license. You just write who holds the copyright. If you don't use code written by someone else, your name is enough.

[–] intrepid@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

Many licenses like GPL need copyright to be specified. Regardless, copyright statement won't affect how you license the content.

[–] Nollij@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 years ago

First, the copyright notice doesn't really do much. Any copyright status, licensing, etc apply whether or not there's a notice.

Second, if you created it, you have full control on how you license it. You can even use multiple licenses. It's common to have GPL (or similar) for personal use, and commercial use being licensed separately for a fee.

If you didn't create it (other contributors did), then each contribution is owned and copyrighted by each contributor. Presumably they have licensed their works under the GPL.

Do you have a specific reason to even include a copyright notice?

[–] pylapp@programming.dev 2 points 2 years ago

If it is your project, no need to get headaches about this. However keep for example the stuff like “Copyright YEAR - your-name” and say it’s under GPL 3 license. But nothing more.