Re:A permalink for your MIT License
by stock_toaster on Sunday November 11, 2012 @11:44PM
(#4771643)
The MIT license is also tiny!
I could possibly see this as a novel way to generate a license the first time for a project (eg. save it in the source tree). However, linking to a version has such a slight benefit, and many potential negatives, that I can't really see why someone would want to do it.
At a minimum it should be in your headers, otherwise we have no idea how to proceed. We are actually running into that issue at work because something we use has a header file with just a copyright in it and no license.
While it is a kind thing to try to do this for folks, linking to a license is not a good idea.
Also, while it isn't as commonplace as it was in the early 2000s, legally, I'm told it is still the best idea to include the license in every file of your project where there is significant value. I don't personally think the clutter is worth it, but then again, I've not written something so important that if the license were pissed upon that I would "gather guns" and sue.
Additionally, even though MIT is still bread and butter as far as I'm concerned (and I'm a Ruby guy and Rails, etc. use it), some claim Apache is better if you are concerned about the strength of the license.