Legal Notices in eZ Publish 3.9
===============================
Background
----------
There are various legal notices in eZ Publish. These notices are meant
to assert ownership rights, provide credit to contributors, help users
understand the risks involved with using eZ Publish, provide information
on licensing and so on.
In the presentation of these legal notices, eZ seeks to balance its own
needs as a company with the needs of those in the eZ ecosystem,
including partners, end users, community members and other Free and Open
projects.
There are four main things that eZ wishes to achieve by including
prominent legal notices:
* promotion of eZ and eZ Publish (which helps to further spread
eZ Publish and creates additional opportunity for all who depend on eZ
Publish as a platform for deploying solutions)
* lower legal risks
* the ability to track eZ Publish use through visible notices
* promotion of Free/Open licenses (like the GPL) and Free/Open software
eZ had hoped to accomplish these goals by requiring footers and an about
page that include a comprehensive set of legal notices. This would be in
addition to manditory notices in the source code.
Partner and Solutions Provider Concerns
---------------------------------------
While most of the eZ community does not have a problem with this, many
parters and eZ Publish-based solutions providers have these concerns
about the notices:
* visitors to sites built on eZ Publish may be confused by the notices
* they may lose business due to customers disliking or misinterpreting
the notices
* their customers may demand that the legal notices are not show
* attackers gain additional information to attack the site with
* some people think that the GPL does not support our view
* the presence of a dedicated page of legal notices creates more design
work for the partner
* some believe that these legal notices cannot be required for
GPL-licensed copies of eZ Publish
Solution
--------
The compromise developed through discussion with the concerned parties
is as follows:
* siteaccesses meant for site administration must retain all legal
notices, including - but not limited to - notices in footers, the
ezinfo/about page and links to the ezinfo/about page and other legal
information.
* siteaccesses for site visitors don't require legal notices. eZ will
nicely ask people to put a "Powered By" footer on the site and to give
some other credit to eZ (and the GPL, when appropriate.) Additionally,
eZ gives partner points to partners who display this optional notice on
sites that they publish.
Of course, all legal notices in the source code *must* be left intact.
For example: Someone is free do remove the "Powered By" footer from a
GPL-licensed copy of eZ Publish. However, all of the legal notices in
the administration interfaces and the source code must remain intact.
Specifications
==============
Note: These specifications only apply to copies of eZ Publish licensed
under the GPL or the eZPUL. Copies of eZ Published licensed under the eZ
Rebrand License will not have a page with this information. Copies of eZ
Publish licensed under the eZ Rebrand License must still display all
legal notices that are in the source code of eZ Publish.
The ezinfo/about Page
---------------------
Information on the ezinfo/about page will be divided into three major
sections:
1. What is eZ Publish?
2. License and Warranty Information
3. Contributors
4. Third Party Software
5. Extensions
### What is eZ Publish? ###
The exact text to use in this section should be provided by or reviewed
by the marketing team.
For the time being, this text should read(new text will be provided by
the marketing team at a later point):
eZ publish 3 is a professional PHP application framework with advanced
CMS (content management system) functionality. As a CMS its most notable
featureis its revolutionary, fully customizable and extendable content
model. Thisis also what makes eZ publish suitable as a platform for
general PHP development,allowing you to rapidly create professional
web-based applications.
Standard CMS functionality (such as news publishing, e-commerce and
forums) are already implemented and ready to use. Standalone libraries
can be used for cross-platform database-independent browser-neutral
PHP projects. Because eZ publish 3 is a web-based application, it can
be accessed from anywhere you have an internet connection.
The eZ Publish description text will be static and may not be overriden
by templates.
### License Notice ###
The license information for this particular copy of eZ Publish is
displayed here. The license text is static and may not be overriden by
templates.
*For GPL-licensed copies, this section should read:*
This copy of eZ Publish is distributed under the terms and conditions of
the GNU General Public License (GPL). Briefly summarized, the GPL gives
you the right to use, modify and share this copy of eZ Publish. If you
choose to share eZ Publish, you may only share it under the terms and
conditions of the GPL. If you share a modified version of eZ Publish,
these modifications must also be placed under the GPL. Read the
complete legal terms and conditions of the GPL at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt or see the file named LICENSE in
the root directory of this eZ Publish distribution.
For eZPUL-licensed copies, this section should read:
This copy of eZ Publish is distributed under the terms and conditions
of the eZ Proprietary Use License (eZPUL). Briefly summarized, the
eZPUL allows you to run a limited number of eZ Publish siteaccess or
instances. You may also modify the software for your own use (and, if
desired, share your modifications under the GNU General Public License
v2 with others). For the complete legal terms and conditions of your
eZPUL license, see the file named LICENSE in the root directory of
this eZ Publish distribution.
### Copyright Notice ###
The top of this section should have the following notice:
Copyright © 1999-2006 eZ systems AS, with portions copyright by
other parties. A complete list of all contributors and third-party
software follows.
### Contributor Credits ###
eZ Publish contains contributions that the contributor has licensed to
eZ under the eZ Contributor Licensing Agreement (eZCLA). In this section
of the ezinfo/about page these contributors are credited and a list of
the files that they have contribute or contributed to is displayed.
Contributors
The following is a list of eZ Publish contributors who have licensed
their work for use by eZ systems AS under the terms and conditions of
the eZ Contributor Licensing Agreement. As permitted by this agreement
with the contributors, eZ systems AS is redistributing the
contribution under the same license as the file that the contribution
is included in. The list of contributors includes the contributors's
name, optional contact info and a list of files that they have
either contributed or contributed work to.
* A. Rand. Programmer : stuff/foo.php, stuff/bar.php,
stuff/baz.php
* Ano T. H. E. R. Programmer: js/quux.js
* ...
Information used to generate this list is stored in machine-readable
blocks of legal information. See the file yaml-legal-blocks.txt for more
information.
This list of contributors is generated by the following process that is
run during the packaging of an eZ Publish distribution:
1. Parse the YAML legal information blocks that are included in each
source file.
2. Skip over software files that are not eZ Publish software files.
3. Capture the list of contributors (if any) stored in the legal notices
block.
4. Create a list similar to what is shown in the above example from the
contributor information.
5. Statically include this list on the ezinfo/about page.
### Third-Party Software ###
Immediately following the list of contributors, a list of the
third-party software that is used in this copy of eZ Publish will be
listed.
Third-Party Software
The following is a list of the third-party software that is
distributed with this copy of eZ Publish. The list of third party
software includes the license for the software in question and the
directory or files that contain the third-party software.
* XAJAX library : LGPL. Copyright © 2005 Jared White & J. Max
Wilson
This list of third-party software is generated by the following process
that is run during the packaging of an eZ Publish distribution:
1. Parse the YAML legal information blocks that are included in each
source file.
2. Skip over software files that are eZ Publish software files.
3. Grab the licensing info stored in the remaining YAML blocks.
block.
4. Create a list similar to what is shown in the above example from the
third-party software information.
5. Statically include this list on the ezinfo/about page.
### Extensions ###
ezinfo/about also needs to be able to show legal information for
extensions (plugins) which are loaded at runtime.
Extensions
The following is a list of the extensions that have been loaded at
run-time by this copy of eZ Publish.
* Online Editor Extension
Copyright 2001-2006 eZ systems AS.
License: GPL
For more information see: http://example.com/foo-extension
Includes contributions from:
* A. U. Thor
* C. O. N. Tributor
Includes the following third-party software:
* Alibrary. LGPL. Copyright (c) 2004 T. Party
* Blibrary. LGPL. Copyright (c) 2003-2006 The Blibrary Team.
In order for the ezinfo/about page to be able to query a extension for
such information, the extension needs to implement the following
interface (optional).
The extension needs a file named ezinfo.php. This file should be located
in extensions/[foobarextension]/ When this ezinfo.php is run, it needs
to set an array according to the pattern below:
class Info
{
function info()
{
return array(
'name' => "Foo Bar module",
'version' => "1.0",
'copyright' => "Copyright © 2006 eZ systems, Foo bar corp © 2006",
'info_url' => "http://example.com/info-foo-bar",
'license' => "GPL",
'contributors' => array (
array(...)
array(...) ),
'3rdparty_software' => array (
array(...)
array(...) )
);
}
}
One problem here is that 'contributors' and '3rdpary_software' needs to be
automaticly generated (based on YAML blocks in the extension) when the
extension is built (to easy the maintance of this information).
If it is easier, there is a option to make a ezinfo.xml document instead of
implementing the creation of a ezinfo.php as above.
Footer
------
All pages in the admin interface should display a footer with the following text:
eZ Publish Copyright © 1999-2006 eZ systems AS and others. For more
information see ezinfo/about.
Example
=======
What is eZ Publish?
eZ publish 3 is a professional PHP application framework with advanced
CMS (content management system) functionality. As a CMS its most notable
featureis its revolutionary, fully customizable and extendable content
model. Thisis also what makes eZ publish suitable as a platform for
general PHP development,allowing you to rapidly create professional
web-based applications.
Standard CMS functionality (such as news publishing, e-commerce and
forums) are already implemented and ready to use. Standalone libraries
can be used for cross-platform database-independent browser-neutral
PHP projects. Because eZ publish 3 is a web-based application, it can
be accessed from anywhere you have an internet connection.
License Notice
This copy of eZ Publish is distributed under the terms and conditions of
the GNU General Public License (GPL). Briefly summarized, the GPL gives
you the right to use, modify and share this copy of eZ Publish. If you
choose to share eZ Publish, you may only share it under the terms and
conditions of the GPL. If you share a modified version of eZ Publish,
these modifications must also be placed under the GPL. Read the complete
legal terms and conditions of the GPL at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt or see the file named LICENSE in the
root directory of this eZ Publish distribution.
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 1999-2006 eZ systems AS, with portions copyright by
other parties. A complete list of all contributors and third-party
software follows.
Contributors
The following is a list of eZ Publish contributors who have licensed
their work for use by eZ systems AS under the terms and conditions of
the eZ Contributor Licensing Agreement. As permitted by this agreement
with the contributors, eZ systems AS is redistributing the contribution
under the same license as the file that the contribution is included in.
The list of contributors includes the contributors's name, optional
contact info and a list of files that they have either contributed or
contributed work to.
* A. Rand. Programmer : stuff/foo.php, stuff/bar.php,
stuff/baz.php
* Ano T. H. E. R. Programmer: js/quux.js
Third-Party Software
The following is a list of the third-party software that is
distributed with this copy of eZ Publish. The list of third party
software includes the license for the software in question and the
directory or files that contain the third-party software.
* XAJAX library : LGPL. Copyright © 2005 Jared White & J. Max
Wilson
Extensions
The following is a list of the extensions that have been loaded at
run-time by this copy of eZ Publish.
* Online Editor Extension
Copyright 2001-2006 eZ systems AS.
License: GPL
For more information see: http://example.com/foo-extension
Includes contributions from:
* A. U. Thor
* C. O. N. Tributor
Includes the following third-party software:
* Alibrary. LGPL. Copyright (c) 2004 T. Party
* Blibrary. LGPL. Copyright (c) 2003-2006 The Blibrary Team.