If I'm installing a binary, where do I put the license?

Question

Gitless offers a binary release as well as the source code. Since I've had difficulty with installing from source (one of the dependencies won't build), I downloaded said binary and copied it to /usr/local/bin. However, I'm uncertain - where should I put the LICENSE.md and README.md included with it?

Yes, I know that from a practical point of view nobody's going to check for the presence of a license on open-source software on my personal computer, and the README is redundant in this case since it's mostly install instructions and it's all on the Github. Practicality isn't the point here; I want to do this properly. Where does the license (and any documentation that isn't compiled in as a --help) go for an installed binary? Usually I either install via a package manager or from source, and any manpages and such are thus presumably handled as the developer intended without my input, so I haven't actually run into this before.

Answer 1

This isn't really relevant for Open Source Stack Exchange, but as far as the installation of documentation on a Unix-style system goes, I'd simply adapt the FHS location for documentation to /usr/local: install the documentation in /usr/local/share/doc/gitless.

As apsillers says, you (as a user) don't need to keep a copy of the license along with the binary. It is helpful to keep a copy of the corresponding source archive for future reference though, as a general rule (not particularly for licensing reasons) — you'll need it if you ever want to give a copy to someone, and more importantly, it might come in handy a few years in the future (nothing on the Internet is permanent).