Question

What is the best practice for releasing a simple software? Suppose I created a very small simple and useful program or a tool and would like to share it with everyone by uploading it to my web-site.

1. Do I need a license and which one? (I read http://www.gnu.org/ and http://www.fsf.org/ but still cannot decide – there are too many of them.)
2. Do I need to put somewhere a copyright and what is the basic principles of creating “Copyright” string?
3. How can I make a user, who is going to download and install my program, to believe that my program doesn’t contain viruses or a malicious code?

Answer 1

Since this is a “very small simple and useful program” (e.g. someone could recreate it easily), I would not worry too much about the details and choose a simple license, something you can include in about 20 lines at the top of every file:

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

There’s really nothing you can say to the pessimistic user to convince them it doesn’t contain a virus, and I would not even go into detail about that. Scan the file with a virus scanner and simply state which one you used, if you want, but nothing more. Providing the source code so someone can read, understand, and compile themselves should alleviate most users’ concerns about you intentionally trying to sabotage them. (And this works even without people actually reading the source, because most people are trusting.)