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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T02:16:30+00:00

I’m looking an good open source license that does not require the copyright notice/license

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I’m looking an good open source license that does not require the copyright notice/license itself be included in the source code, and with a “no warranty clause.” Does anyone know of one?

I want this because the software in question is an extremely simple bookmarklet. Including the license with the Javascript would easily triple the size of the code. Even setting that aside, requiring license inclusion would present an unnecessary hurdle to the novice programmers who are otherwise perfectly capable of modifying the bookmarklet.

I’ve Googled around on this and haven’t found anything except the “WTFPL” which does not include a warranty clause because it is not strictly a software license. Also, WTFPL requires you to change the name of the code if you modify it. I also looked at some license comparison charts but most don’t bother to catalog license inclusion requirements since it’s a total non issue with most software.

As for releasing into the public domain, this thread indicates that is not an internationally portable concept: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/219742/open-source-why-not-release-into-public-domain

The only reason I’m bothering to put it under a license is that, one day after publishing the bookmarklet, I received an email from someone in France asking if he could translate/improve it, and I’d like to encourage anyone else to do the same without having to email me.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The solution I settled was to use the MIT license but with an URL as the copyright notice (in a simple comment at the top of the bookmarklet).

    I noticed that some other bookmarklets and general Javascript on Github used this approach, e.g. https://github.com/gleuch/shaved-bieber/blob/master/shaved-bieber.js

    Also, a discussion on the OSI page for MIT license indicates this is common practice and probably OK; see comments http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

    It woud be nice if this was explicitly allowed in the MIT license but I’d rather bet on this notification idiom being legit/valid than invent my own license. It’s only a bookmarklet, after all 🙂

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