Licensing Boilerplate

What boilerplate language should you use in sample code?

We recommend that you use the MIT license boilerplate language.

Copy and paste the following text into each file, or main file of your source code samples:

Copyright (c) [year], Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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.

Consider any libraries you import

If your samples uses third party dependencies, you need to consider their licensing requirements. For example, if use Node.js in your project, you’ll probably use libraries from the Node Package Manager (npm). Each of those libraries you depend on will have its own open source license. If each of their licenses is “permissive” (gives the public permission to use, modify, and share, without any condition for downstream licensing), you can use any license you want. Common permissive licenses include MIT, Apache 2.0, ISC, and BSD.

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Further Reading

For general background reading:

• https://opensource.guide/legal/#which-open-source-license-is-appropriate-for-my-project