List of components and their dependent component licenses

[maxgolov]

List of components and their Copyright notices / Licenses

All code contributed in this repo is licensed under Apache License v2.0 with a few notable exceptions:

• MPark Variant - Boost license. This code can be removed entirely and replaced by Google Abseil implementation, that is Apache License v2.0 ( Switch to abseil::variant as default variant class across api #572 ) . That ultimately allows all of OpenTelemetry C++ API be licensed under the same Apache License v2.0.

• HTTP client presently depends on libcurl , which is implemented under its own MIT/X-alike license . This is required for Zipkin and Elastic exporters.

• nlohmann/json - Required for Zipkin and Elastic exporter. Required for zPages. And Optional for specific subtype of ETW exporter. The library is licensed under MIT License. Products builds that are shipping with OTLP gRPC exporter or ETW exporter, and NOT including zPages - do not require this module, but it may come in handy for other aspects, e.g. remote provisioning of exporter using JSON configuration.

• TraceLogging Dynamic for Windows library - strongly recommended for ETW exporter, as default transport channel - is also MIT License. Products shipping on Linux do not require this component.

• Certain other parts of OTLP exporter may require Boost ? cc: @ThomsonTan to confirm on where it will be required.

Proposal

The goal is to create a markdown document that captures above detail with all the licenses; alongside with build options that enable these components mentioned above. Not every build combo requires all the licenses. Having the OSS components document enables any product commercially shipping with OpenTelemetry C++ SDK to easily list all the required licenses in their distro, prepackaged build of SDK. Reference example of OSS components document that we need to add to the repo.

[lalitb]

Moving to GA milestone as this is documentation change.

[lalitb]

#844 resolves this.