Compliance This is not a legal notice, so do not treat it as one. This is intended as "plain English" advice for the average person to ensure they comply with licenses in this software in the most simple way. It takes the position of "comply with the MOST restrictive license in this software and then you will comply with all." If you have any doubts, please consult the full license COPYING files and a lawyer. Take this as a rough guide. The simple advice Do this and you won't go too wrong. 1. Provide the content of ALL of the COPYING and AUTHORS files as printed material with your product and/or in a dialog (e.g. an "about" dialog) in your product user interface. 2. Provide a URL from which to be able to download "tar files" with ALL of the source of Elementary exactly as it was when used to compile the binaries for your product that ships Elementary. Keep this URL valid for the lifetime of the product. 3. If you made changes to Elementary it would be appreciated if you interacted with us (see http://www.enlightenment.org ) and provided the changes you made in patch form BEFORE you ship a product, so they may be reviewed to see if you have made any mistakes and perhaps have created problems you do not know of yet. F.A.Q. Q. Where is the licensing information? A. See the COPYING file here in this directory. This is the proper legal information you will need. It covers all of elementary, EXCEPT the theme which is public domain (the text files only - images are not). Q. Do I need to make the source public of libraries or applications that I build on top of Elementary? A. No. Even the default theme is public domain, which means you can make your own by copying it and starting from there, and you may license your copied variation any way you like. Q. Do I need to provide the source for Elementary? A. Yes. In general you do. If you are shipping any of the binaries or libraries built from Elementary, you must provide the EXACT source code used to build those binaries. Q. If I have to provide source, how should I do this? A. The best way is to provide a reference in an "about" dialog in the product that ships the Elementary libraries/tools that gives a URL from which the source can be downloaded EXACTLY as you used to compile Elementary. You may not simply point to upstream repositories and pass the problem to someone else. You MUST provide the source exactly as used. You MAY also provide the source code itself on the product itself (e.g. on its filesystem) (provide the tar archives of the source), or in place of a download link if you do not believe you will be able to maintain that download link for the lifetime of the product. You MAY also (or instead of the above 2) provide the source on media (CD, DVD, flash etc.) that accompany the product. Choose 1 or more of the above methods and you will be fine. Q. Do I need to reproduce the license information in the COPYING file? A. Yes. You must provide these with your product, and just like the source code, provide them as part of the user interface in full (e.g. in a dialog), or as files in the filesystem, on actual printed material (manuals, papers) that accompany the product or in CD, DVD etc. media. Q. Is there a simpler list of do's and don'ts i can use? A. Yes. See http://www.tldrlegal.com. specifically: http://www.tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-lesser-general-public-license-v2.1-(lgpl-2.1)