SPDX Information and REUSE Standard

All projects and files for an hosted project MUST be REUSE compliant. REUSE requires SPDX information for each file, rules for which are as follows:

  • for files copyrighted by projects contributors ("First Party Files"):
    • any new file MUST have a SPDX header (copyright and license);
    • for files that don't support headers (for example binaries, patches etc.) an associated .license file MUST be included with the relevant SPDX information;
    • do not add Copyright Year as part of the SPDX header information;
    • the general rule for patch files is to use the MIT license and not the license of the component for which the patch applies - the latter solution would be error-prone and hard to manage and maintain in the long run, and there may be difficult-to-handle cases (what if the patches modifies multiple files in the same component - eg. gcc - which are subject to different licenses);
    • when modifying a file through this contribution process, you may (but don't have to) claim copyright by adding a copyright line;
    • you MUST NOT alter copyright statements made by others, but only add your own;
  • for files copyrighted by third parties and just added to the project by contributors, eg. files copied from other projects or back-ported patches ("Third Party Files"):
    • if upstream files already have SPDX headers, they MUST be left unchanged;
    • if upstream files do not have SPDX headers:
      • the exact upstream provenance (repo, revision, path) MUST be identified;
      • you MUST NOT add SPDX headers to Third Party Files;
      • copyright and license information, as well as upstream provenance information (in the "Comment" section), MUST be stored in [.reuse/dep5]{.title-ref} following Debian dep5 specification (see examples below);
      • you MUST NOT use wildcards (*) in dep5 "Files" paragraphs even if Debian specs allow it: it may lead to unnoticed errors or inconsistencies in case of future file additions that may be covered by wildcard expressions even if they have a different license;
      • in case of doubts or problems in finding the correct license and copyright information for Third Party Files, contributors may ask the project's Legal Team in the project mailing list oniro-dev@eclipse.org;

SPDX Header Example

Make sure all of your submitted new files have a licensing statement in the headers. Please make sure that the license for your file is consistent with the licensing choice at project level and that you select the correct SPDX identifier, as in the following example for Apache 2.0 license:

/*
 * SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Jane Doe <jane@example.com>
 *
 * SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
 */

DEP5 "Files" Paragraph Examples 

Files: meta-oniro-staging/recipes-containers/buildah/buildah_git.bb
Copyright: OpenEmbedded Contributors
License: MIT
Comment: Recipe file for buildah copied from meta-virtualization project at
         https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-virtualization,
         recipes-containers/buildah.
         README file of meta-virtualization project states:
         "All metadata is MIT licensed unless otherwise stated."

Files: meta-oniro-staging/recipes-devtools/ninja/ninja/0001-feat-support-cpu-limit-by-cgroups-on-linux.patch
Copyright: Google Inc.
License: Apache-2.0
Comment: Patch for ninja backported from Ninja project at
        https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja, commit 540be33
        Copyright text left as found in the header of the patched file.

Substantial Contributions

Therefore, if your contribution is only a patch directly applied to an existing file, then you are not required to do anything. If your contribution is an entire new project, or a substantial, copyrighted contribution, you MUST make sure that you do that following the IP Policy and that you comply with REUSE standard to include the licensing information where they are required.