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I recently made this website, hosted on Github. (Repo)**

The website uses multiple MIT-licensed (or similar licenses) 'code':

  • Several SVG icons from Wikimedia commons (Icon 1, Icon 2, Icon 3).
  • Code I copied and significantly modified from an Observable Notebook which is ISC licensed.
  • The d3.js library (BSD 3-Clause) (which I don't think is relevant, but I'm listing it anyway).

After a lot of research, I came to the conclusion that I need to have the following text:

    Copyright 2017–2020 Observable, Inc.

    Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
    purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
    copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
    
    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
    WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
    MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
    ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
    WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
    ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
    OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.



    Copyright (c) 2011–2013 VisualEditor team <https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FVisualEditor.git/master/AUTHORS.txt>
    
    Copyright (c) 2011–2017 OOjs UI Team and other contributors <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/GOJU/browse/master/AUTHORS.txt>


    Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
    of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
    in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
    to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
    copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
    furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
    
    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
    copies or substantial portions of the Software.
    
    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
    IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
    FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
    AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
    LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
    OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
    SOFTWARE.

Written in:

  • The About Page (and I should create one).
  • LICENSE.txt
  • Any existing documentation.
  • README ?
  • And most importantly in a comment at the beginning of the .html and .js files (I have only one for each)

My questions are:

  1. Which parts of the text are necessary and what can be discarded?
  2. Am I forgetting something that needs to be added?
  3. Questions (1) and (2) again regarding the places to put the text in.
  4. General remarks and suggestions are also more than welcome :)

Notes:

  • I copied the permission notice only once for each license type (once for MIT and once for ISC).

  • I copied the copyright notice only once for each author (Icon 2 and Icon 3 are both by "OOjs UI Team and other contributors", so I wrote Copyright (c) 2011–2017 OOjs UI Team and other contributors only once)

Thanks in advance :)

1 Answer 1

4

And most importantly in a comment at the beginning of the .html and .js files (I have only one for each)

Each file that you copied third-party code into must indeed contain a comment at the beginning with the copyright and permission notices for all the copied code, in addition to the copyright and permission notices for your own code.

In principle, that is sufficient to satisfy the MIT, ISC and BSD licensing conditions for the javascript and/or html portions you copied.

For the icons, the situation is a bit more complex, because the license information is probably not contained in those files themselves but carried alongside it.

The About Page (and I should create one).

For icons and similar items, it is customary to have an About page mentioning the copyright and licensing information. And if you are creating an About page, it is a nice sign of goodwill to mention there also the copyright and licensing information for the third-party javascript and html (in addition to the comments in the source files), or to have a link to those projects.

In your About page, you should mention which copyright and permission notices refer to which items. You could, for example, organize it like this

About

Copyright (c) 2021 Ari Friedman
All rights reserved.

Third-party licenses

Icons:

  • <Icon 1>: Copyright notice 1; Licensed under MIT license (text below)
  • <Icon 2> & <Icon3>: Copyright notice 2; Licensed under MIT license (text below)

Libraries:

  • ...

MIT License:
< include MIT license text here>

ISC License:
< include ISC license text here>

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  • Thank you very much, you helped me a lot! I am guessing LICENSE.txt should contain the same license information as the about page, right? Mar 10, 2021 at 15:06
  • 1
    @AriFriedman, more or less, although the LICENSE.txt file is more geared towards the source code and the About page more towards the content and visuals of the site. Mar 10, 2021 at 15:19

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