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TRG 7.07 - Legal notice for non-code (e.g. documentation)

StatusCreatedPost-History
Active18-Jul-2023Update: improved description
13-Apr-2023Initial version

Why​

Eclipse Tractus-X is an open source project hosted by the Eclipse Foundation licensed under the Apache License 2.0. The legal obligations of the content must be observed in all forms of which the content is available.

All products delivered by the project—including websites, documentation, slides and help must include certain notices. Documentation might include a notice in either the pre- or post-amble, or a website might provide this information in a common footer, or a dedicated page. (From: Eclipse Foundation Project Handbook)

Description​

Eclipse Tractus-X allows two outbound licenses: Apache-2.0 and CC-BY-4.0. The outbound license is the LICENSE that resides at the root level of each repository. Unless otherwise noted, this is the default license for all self-created artifacts in the repository. For all repositories containing code, this is the Apache-2.0 license. An example for a repository licensed under the CC-BY-4.0 are the semantic models.

In this TRG, by non-code artifacts we mean documentation and images embedded in this documentation. All of these artifacts have to include notices about copyright, license and source location information. Excluded are the legal documenation files.

There are special cases for the KIT documentation, that have to be licensed under the CC-BY-4.0, see TRG 7-08.

Location of secondary licenses​

If you use more then one outbound license, you have to put the "second" license to a LICENSES/ directory.
Naming: <SPDX-License-Identifier>.txt

Example: Apache-2.0 as default license, CC-BY-4.0 as second license

project/
|__ LICENSE              (<- Apache-2.0)
|__ LICENSES/
|   |__ CC-BY-4.0.txt
| ...
tip

Think about "old-fashioned" printed documents:
Attributions for non-code artefacts, like documentation files, have to be visible for the reciever, that means it has to be added to the content, NOT in comments, metadata, or alt text (images).

Documentation​

In this chapter we show an example of how to do it for the md format licensed under the Apache-2.0, for other formats like slides, pdf, and others the format may be slightly different.

Add a NOTICE section (post or preamble) into your dedicated documentation file, with the following information:

## NOTICE

This work is licensed under the [Apache-2.0](https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).

- SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
- SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 202x,202y <MyCompany>
- SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 202x,202y Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation
- Source URL: https://github.com/eclipse-tractusx/<myrepo>
tip

If there are multiple copyright holders, insert several SPDX-FileCopyrightText lines, for each entry one line. Explanations in brackets, do not copy. PLEASE.

  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2022,2023 MyCompany (-> MyCompany contributed from 2022 to 2023)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021,2022 YourCompany (-> YourCompany contributed from 2021 to 2022)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2023 ThirdCompany (-> ThirdCompany contributed only in 2023)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2020,2023 AnotherCompany (-> AnotherCompany contributed from 2020 to 2023)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021,2023 Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation

Self-created images​

Self-created images have as default license the license at root level of your repository (as long you followed the guidelines of having a LICENSES directory for secondary licenses).

If your documenation file and the images are in the same repository and have the default license and authorship/copyright is covered by the git history, the NOTICE section above is sufficient.

If not, please see TRG 7.08.

Third-party content​

If you embed third-party content (images) in your artefacts, the images have to be attributed with th following informations:

  • Title
  • Author/Copyright
  • License
  • Source

Where to put the attribution​

  • right next to, over or under the image
  • OR make a clear reference to it and put the attribution in the NOTICE section

Example - photo with attribution:

example

Direct attribution:

"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by Timothy Vollmer is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Section for the notice file:

### Third-party content

- Title: "Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco"
- SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
- SPDX-FileCopyrightText: [Timothy Vollmer](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteenmilesofstring/)
- Source URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteenmilesofstring/8256206923/in/set-72157632200936657

See more: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/best_practices_for_attribution