MS-Access application code --> Free Software

[Richard Hollenbeck]

I originally wrote my grades program in MS-Access to help community college 
teachers in the California community colleges keep track of their students' 
grades and produce reports for the students to know how they are doing in 
the semester and to submit reports to the school at the end of the semester.

I later discovered many flaws my program's design and in my own skills as a 
programmer.  I want help completing this project and I want to abandon the 
idea of getting rich selling my program.

I would like to put this program "out there" so anybody can modify it and 
distribute it freely according to the GNU General Public Licence version 2.
That way I can get a bunch of help with "my" program without having to worry 
about somebody taking my countless thousands of hours of work turning it 
into their own proprietary program.  I believe I will lose my proprietary 
interest in the project, but in return I will benefit many thousands of
community college teachers (and whichever other teachers find "my" program 
useful) and I will help myself get this project completed.

I am guessing that by doing this I can safely post larger snippets of code
(on an Access newsgroup, for example) without worrying about getting ripped 
off.

Opinions?

Do I need to join any organization to do this?  Or do I just need to display 
something like the standard, "This program is free software; you can 
redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public 
License . . .etc., etc., etc.," at the top of all my source code and when 
the program opens?