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As a person who wants to allow other people to use my code, I want to use a standard, proper license. But sometimes my code ends up being smaller than the LICENSE file that comes with it. This can especially annoying if I write a code snippet and want people to actually use it. I don't especially like the idea of copying and pasting 196 words of the MIT License, and then 30 words of the actual code itself. That just sounds absurdly wasteful.

Could I just mention that my code is under the MIT License (or any license for that matter) and then simply give a person the link to that license, so they can look at its terms and conditions?

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  • If your code is that small, chances are it isn't even eligible for copyright protection.
    – vonbrand
    Jan 12, 2016 at 23:07
  • It turns out that the Apache License has some boilerplate legalese that you can copy and paste in lieu of the license text. That's only 90 words.
    – Left SE On 10_6_19
    Jan 17, 2016 at 20:56

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Well, basically it has to be very clear which license you use and the license text must be available. Usually it means that a file with the license text is put into the project and the files are marked that they use the license (a short comment like this: this is licensed under MIT License, see file LICENSE). Some tend to copying the full license text into each file of the project, which seems overkill.

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