What copyright notice should I put on my FOSS website?
What copyright notice should I put on my FOSS website?
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 <myname>", but I do not know if this conflicts with the GPL licence. Should I change it to something like "Copyright 2023 <projectname> contributers"?
I would suggest actually naming the license under which it is released if you're talking about the website that is generated by your software. If you're talking about the content of a website describing your project, like a landing page or something like that, I'd either attribute copyright to who wrote the content, or release it under a Creative Commons license such as CC-BY-NC.
Just a note - NC (noncommercial) and ND (non-derivative) would make it non-FOSS. CC BY-SA (share alike) is FOSS compatible.
It wouldn't be FOSS because a landing page with nothing but content isn't software. I'm referring to the site at blender.org vs the source code for an application at a git repository.
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.
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?
Many licenses like GPL need copyright to be specified. Regardless, copyright statement won't affect how you license the content.
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.