Ask HN: Is there a standard for including license, attribution within code?

martey · on May 2, 2012

Furthermore, is it not a better idea to simply include this in the readme and leave it out of the code altogether?

Luis Villa discusses some reasons why you might want include licensing information in every file: http://tieguy.org/blog/2012/03/17/on-the-importance-of-per-f...

alias1 · on May 4, 2012

I can't remember if this was an official style guide anywhere, or whether I just saw it on a project and liked it, but this is what I have been using.

  // Project Name
  // https://github.com/myuser/my-project-name
  //
  // Copyright (c) 2012 My Name
  //
  // Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
  // you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
  // You may obtain a copy of the License at
  //
  //    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  //
  // Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  // distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  // WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  // See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  // limitations under the License.

debacle · on May 2, 2012

I include a URL to the license in every file, and the license as part of the codebase. I don't believe that's a standard, but it's what jQuery does:

http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.2.js

And it seems like a good balance between honoring the license and also keeping it out of the user's way.