Can I just link to the FSF copy of the GPL? [closed]

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I have some code I'd like to license under GPL v3. The FSF's suggested header for that is:

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

That line "You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program" is what's tripping me up. Right afterwards there's a link to their copy of the license, and I'd like to just let that constitute the text of the license for my project (it's a one-file project and I don't want to add another file that just has the text of the license). Am I violating anything by not having a copy of the exact license text? What legal force does "should have" actually have?

Answer 1

You write that your project is just a single file. In that case - as you have seen yourself - having the whole license text in a secondary file might be a bit of a bummer.

However the GNU GPL requires that you pass along the license text. This is covered as well in the GPL FAQ:

• Why does the GPL require including a copy of the GPL with every copy of the program?

The FAQ continues for something that might be the case with your application, if it's only some 200 to 300 lines long maybe:

• What if the work is not very long?

It might be surprising for some, but GNU actually suggests using the Apache License 2.0 (Apache-2.0) in such a case.

So you might still ask you why they provide a link in that license plate header suggestion. Well, the sad truth is - and I have seen that even with prominent projects - that some developers think that passing the license text with the software is just not necessary (even the license says otherwise!). That leads to the situation that users are getting the software but are not able to learn about their rights easily. So for practical reasons in the license plate a URI has been placed so that these users can quickly learn that they should have gotten the license text already with the software and then can poke the distributor ;)

Answer 2

You are the copyright owner and licensor of the code you can handle this any way you want. You can change the last paragraph to just point the use to the license.

In the end the only person who can complain about it is the copyright holder and thats you.