So far there had been a lot of external libraries provided for us to reduce our efforts on coding and utilising the time to provide quality apps to the play store. Now, I am keen to understand whatever the libraries that we use to build our android apps, should we have to give some credits or attributions inside our app or in the app description? If so then what if I use multiple libraries in my app, should I have to provide the license attribution for all the libraries I use in my app separately?
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You most certainly should credit the author(s) of any code which you yourself did not write. Not only is this the descent thing to do, but in may cases it may be a legal requirement.
When someone creates a repository on Github they are given the option to add a standard licence to the repository e.g. GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. They may instead have opted not to include a licence or to include one of their own creation instead.
The first thing to look for is a file in the top-level of the repository called “LICENCE.txt”. Within this file there will be clear instructions on how to appropriately attribute the authorship of the library in question, and more importantly, what you may and may not do with it. Typically the licence will require you to include a copy of licence along with any of your code which uses the library.
For example the MIT licence includes the following statement:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
If there isn’t a file called “LICENCE.txt” then look for “README.txt” or something similar.
What if you can’t find a licence you may ask? Well the folks at Github say the following:
You’re under no obligation to choose a license. It’s your right not to
include one with your code or project, but please be aware of the
implications. Generally speaking, the absence of a license means that
the default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all
rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce,
distribute, or create derivative works from your work. This might not
be what you intend.
For further details see https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing/