Rails and GPL

Rails
1

I have some Rails software I am working on that I think I want to
eventually release under the GPL. I am looking for advice in this area.
Specifically…

  1. Does the GPL comment have to appear in all files, or just certain
    ones? For example, do I have to include it in the view templates?

  2. Is there a way to get Rails, or the Radrails plugin, or some other
    Eclipse feature to automatically include the GPL comments in my
    generated/edited files or do I have to manually add the comments to each
    one?

  3. Are there other licenses I should be looking at aside from GPL/LGPL?

Any thoughts from people with experience in this area would be
appreciated.

Thanks,
Nathan

2

hi nathan!

Nathan L. [29/08/06 20:35]:

  1. Does the GPL comment have to appear in all files, or just
    certain ones? For example, do I have to include it in the view
    templates?
    well, i decided to include it in *.rb files only, however, not sure
    about that yet…
  1. Is there a way to get Rails, or the Radrails plugin, or some
    other Eclipse feature to automatically include the GPL comments
    in my generated/edited files or do I have to manually add the
    comments to each one?
    in order to have it done automatically i slightly modified
    Rails::Generator::Commands#file to include a given header to every
    *.rb file. that way both files generated by the rails command and
    script/generate get that header prepended.
  1. Are there other licenses I should be looking at aside from
    GPL/LGPL?
    personally i’d prefer the GPL over nearly any other license!
    however, as [1] points out, one might consider sticking with rails’
    (so-called) MIT license even in spite of other preferences.
    generally, [2] seems to be a good starting point to learn about
    different licenses.

[1] http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/65177
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Any thoughts from people with experience in this area would be
appreciated.
sry, not much of that on my part :wink: hope i could help, anyway…

cheers
jens

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3

Nathan L. wrote:

  1. Does the GPL comment have to appear in all files, or just certain
    ones? For example, do I have to include it in the view templates?

Including license information in all files isn’t necessary, AFAIK. You
just have to clearly declare that your application is released under the
GPL license - even a signle LICENSE.txt file in the main folder of your
app will do. You may also consider including that info in files that are
available to the public (.js, .css etc)

4

RadRails has a Templates feature similar to TextMate’s snippets. You
could create one of those and insert the lengthy GPL statement into
there.

(or perhaps a reference to a LICENCE file in the root of your project?)

Nic

5

Hi Nathan,

On Aug 29, 2006, at 2:35 PM, Nathan L. wrote:

  1. Does the GPL comment have to appear in all files, or just
    certain ones? For example, do I have to include it in the view
    templates?

There is a section in the GPL titled “How to Apply These Terms to
Your New Programs” (at the bottom). I think this is what you want to
be reading.

Now, I don’t want to be obnoxious/rude/annoying/out-of-line here,
especially since I personally like the GPL quite a lot, but I suspect
you have not read the GPL recently so I think it might be worth
taking the time to do so.

Cheers,
Bob

Bob H. – blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/
hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc. – http://www.recursive.ca/
Raconteur – http://www.raconteur.info/
xampl for Ruby – http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/

6

Nathan L. wrote:

I have some Rails software I am working on that I think I want to
eventually release under the GPL. I am looking for advice in this area.
Specifically…

  1. Does the GPL comment have to appear in all files, or just certain
    ones? For example, do I have to include it in the view templates?

  2. Is there a way to get Rails, or the Radrails plugin, or some other
    Eclipse feature to automatically include the GPL comments in my
    generated/edited files or do I have to manually add the comments to each
    one?

  3. Are there other licenses I should be looking at aside from GPL/LGPL?

Any thoughts from people with experience in this area would be
appreciated.

Thanks,
Nathan

It’s perfectly fine and even potentially interesting to hear about
people’s experiences in this area. But if you really need to protect
yourself (which is the case if there are interests at stake other than
your own personal ones), then you need to talk to a qualified IP
attorney. Unfortunately, not all that many of them are really
knowledgeable about FOSS issues, so be prepared to pay for him to
educate himself too.