I have just recently completed my first open source project and while it is mostly a tool I still want to release it as open source considering it is C# so if someone wanted to they could decompile it. Also, I'm not looking to sell it.
I was researching licensing but the wording is a bit over my head. Mostly I'm just looking for a license that recognizes me as the creator and does not allow anyone else to put their name on it and "steal it." I'm most likely going to use either google code or sourcefourge to host the project and ideally I could have a donation button. I'm not sure if or which software licenses would prevent that sort of thing?
Also, I'm not really sure how licenses and copyrights "work." Do I just choose a license and paste it at the top of every source file? Should I include my name as well? Do I also put the licenses in the project's root directory? How does one obtain a copyright? It seems like most people just stick it on their stuff. Is there an actual process to obtaining one?
As for software licenses I've looked at so far, it seems like Apache 2.0 or MIT/BSD is what I'm looking for but I'm not exactly sure. Basically I just don't want anyone to steal my program and put their name on it. Other than that I'm fine with people looking at the source code, modifying it, or taking pieces from it, as long as they credit me.
Sorry that came out longer than I originally hoped for. Hopefully I didn't ask too many questions! Thanks for reading!
