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

StatusCreatedPost-History
Active25-Apr-2024Updates for CC-BY-4.0 license
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 (Apache-2.0). For non-code the default license is the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-4.0).

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 the following licenses: Apache-2.0 and CC-BY-4.0 for non-code.

In this TRG, by non-code artifacts we mean e.g. 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 documentation files.

The CC-BY-4.0 is the default license for non-code. For some documentation it may makes sense to put it under the Apache-2.0 license, especially for technical documentation with code snippets embedded. There are special cases for the KIT documentation, that must be licensed under the CC-BY-4.0, see TRG 7-08.

tip

Think about "old-fashioned" printed documents:
Attributions for non-code artifacts, like documentation files, have to be visible for the receiver, 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 a file with 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 {owner}[ and others]
- SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 202xy Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation
- Source URL: https://github.com/eclipse-tractusx/<myrepo>/<link_to_doc_or_doc_dir> (*)
- Images: https://github.com/eclipse-tractusx/<myrepo>/<link_to_image_or_image_dir> (**)

(*) URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material to the extent reasonably practicable

(**) Only, if you include self created artifacts, see below

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 Owner1 (-> Owner1 created the content in 2022)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021 Owner2 (-> Owner2 created the content in 2021)
  • SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021 Contributors to the Eclipse Foundation

Self-created content​

Self-created content like images should have the copyright and license information included, where ever possible. Images should go under the CC-BY-4.0. See TRG 7.08

Third-party content​

If you embed third-party content , e.g. images, graphics, logos in your artifacts, the images have to be attributed with the following information:

  • 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

Addition for the notice section:

Also add this section to the NOTICE file at root level, section "Third-party content"

### 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