1 Introduction

Boilerplate is that necessary bit of text at the top of source code files that conveys the copyright holders and license of the file. It’s not always identical from file to file, but it certainly has a standard look and feel to it.

Programming languages generally support copyright and license notices through their commenting facility. For example, the C language has a different commenting style then haskell: ‘/* foo */’ vs ‘{- bar -}’

Free software depends on copyright and license notices being present because individual files have a way of propagating independently from their parent project.. Adding these notices can be time-consuming even for small projects.

licenseutils consists of a program licensing, and a shell called lu-sh. Together they provide a set of commands to quickly and easily modifying files to include a standard-looking free software boilerplate for various different programming languages.

licenseutils uses the GNU Source Highlight library to detect comments. www.gnu.org/software/src-highlite/

If you’re wondering how to add license notices to your files, here is a quick-start example:

$ licensing new-boilerplate
$ licensing choose gpl
$ licensing choose c
$ licensing copyright My Name
$ licensing apply *.c