Wiki Documents

All non-Reference documents in this wiki are governed by the following License:

Licensed under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 4.0 Intl. (the "License"); you may not use this documentation except in compliance with the License.

Source Code

All ONAP source code, including files processed by ONAP itself (such as Heat Orchestration Templates, Yang modules, etc.) are governed by the following:

/*
 * ============LICENSE_START=============================================================================================================
 * Copyright (c) 2019 <Company or Individual>.
 * ===================================================================
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *        http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS
 * OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
 * ============LICENSE_END===============================================================================================================
 * 
 */

Copyright Instructions for Reference Documents 

Reference documents furnished by ONAP members must contain applicable copyright notices. For example, documents that have been furnished by AT&T are governed by the following copyright. Consult the legal department of your organization to obtain the correct wording for your contributions.

The copyright notice must appear at least once, near the beginning of the document.


Copies of License Texts:

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7 Comments

  1. Mark Leonard

    Now that we are in the year 2018 we should update the above license text to clarify how multiple years should be specified.

    For example, if I create a new Java source code file should the Copyright year(s) be 2017, 2018, 2017-18, or 2017-2018, or some other format?

    Here is a link to some discussion on this subject: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130478/what-copyright-date-for-an-update-to-an-open-source-project-from-last-year?

    1. Mark Leonard

      Replying to my own question...
      the Copyright for an updated project contains the string 2017-2018 and all .java and pom.xml files need to have the license text.

      This policy is exemplified by the commit https://gerrit.onap.org/r/#/c/35529/1 

  2. Tony Hansen

    A few people have started adding this text to the license blocks:


    SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0


    Documentation on this meta-tag can be found at https://wiki.spdx.org/, in particular https://wiki.spdx.org/view/Technical_Team/SPDX_Meta_Tags. Similar tag values exist for creative commons, etc.


    Should we:

    • disavow this practice?
    • support this practice as optional?
    • make this a recommended practice?
    • mandate this practice?

    1. Stephen Winslow

      Hi Tony, thanks for raising this; I would strongly recommend this as a best practice for licensing notices.

      SPDX short-form identifiers can make it far easier to identify and automate license detection. Instead of needing to parse license notice text blocks (which can frequently get modified by accident), SPDX short-form license identifiers are unambiguous and standardized, and can start to move towards being able to "grep" for licenses. The Linux kernel and other open source projects have increasingly adopted them.

      In addition to the links you noted, more info is available at: https://spdx.org/ids

      They can also be added to existing files, without necessarily needing to remove the existing license text blocks.

      Files with ONAP source code would use the following, for Apache License version 2.0:

           SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

      Files with ONAP documentation would use the following, for Creative Commons Attribution 4.0:

           SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0

  3. Oren Haim Zvi Kleks

    Hi, I have a question about modification. 

    Is it legitimate that company B will modify a file that Company A created , and add it's name to the license as modifier?

    1. Keong Lim

      This is exactly how it is already done, e.g.


    2. Stephen Winslow

      Hi Oren, a couple of comments on this:

      I'm assuming that the original file in your example was released by Company A under the Apache-2.0 license (since that's ONAP's project license). If so, then it's entirely normal and expected by open source communities that other individuals and companies can take that file and modify it, as long as they comply with the applicable license.

      A company that modifies a file may often add their own copyright statement, to clarify that they own the copyrights to those modifications. However, the original copyright holder's own notices should never be removed without that copyright holder's consent.

      If you have additional questions, you may want to consult with your company's legal counsel as I'm not able to provide you with legal advice. But I hope this is helpful in describing open source communites' norms and expectations.