enhancement
Many FOSS licenses require that users
- be informed of the license of the software being used (EPL-2.0)
- be provided with the license text of the software being used (Apache 2.0)
- make the source code of the software being used available upon request and provide notice of this (EPL-2.0)
- copyright information be provided (BSD 3-Clause)
- warranty disclaimers from the original authors be provided or displayed (BSD 3-Clause)
The current “License Overview” does not adequately address this:
- The display is accessible only to an administrative user
- The view does not provide copyright information or warranty disclaimers
- The view provides only an external link to the license—it is therefore not included with the software.
- There is no mention of or offer to provide the source code
- The view does not provide license information for the TopLogic modules themselves.
Improvement
- Dialog box for all users in the user menu or sidebar
- Per library used
- Include a document containing the license text, copyright notices, and warranty disclaimers
- Option to download license information from within the application (not from an external source)
We need to clarify how we can ensure that we would still be able to provide the source code for the libraries used even if the library’s official repository were no longer accessible.
The simplest option would be to bundle the source code with the application itself—“Include the source code”—but this unnecessarily bloats the software archive. At a minimum, we would need to ensure that the source code is stored in our Nexus repository mirror and, from there, included in a backup from which, at least in theory, it could be provided upon request.
Test
- Open the License Overview in the user menu.