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About files
About Files
It is an Eclipse Foundation requirement for Europa projects that the About file (about.html) exist and be accurate for every plug-in, whether it contains third party code or not. Recently I have noticed that the abouts are not an accurate reflection of the third party code redistributed in that plug-in or worse, the about file is missing! There are 2 basic about templates:
- about for plug-ins that contain ONLY EPL CONTENT
- about for plug-ins that contain some or all NON-EPL CONTENT - sometimes we refer to this as third party content
The platform also uses an ABOUT file for SOURCE PLUG-INS.
The Lucene plug-in demonstrates a simple example of an about that contains third party content. Notice the link to license files in a directory called about_files. The Europa projects tend to do this by convention so the about file isn't too long.
POINTS TO REMEMBER:
- Nested third party code must be identified in the about and all licenses applicable to all third party content in the plug-in should be linked from or present in the about.html file. See the about in the Tomcat plug-in for an example of this (MX4J is nested).
- Encryption (either use of or implementation of) should be identified in the about. See the about for the Authorization Compatibility plug-in for an example of this.