Including a license in a Download

Introduction

A license may be associated with a Download and a user may optionally be asked to accept a license before being able to download.

There are seven licenses as standard and additional licenses may be added.

Please note any enforcement of a license is solely the resposibility of the website owner or operator.  jDownloads just provides the facilities and can take no part whatsoever in enforcing the terms of the licence.

License types

The six standard licenses may be grouped into two classes. There is also a seventh license, the Commercial license, which is a blank one for testing your own license.

1. Those that are linked to a document such as the GNU/GPL, GNU/LGPL and the Creative Commons licenses.  A Description may also be included in these licenses. These licenses cannot be modified.

2. Those that only have a description  that contains the text of the license, examples are Donationware, Linkware and Charityware.  The text may contain HTML code.
licence 20

Adding a License to a Download

Adding a licence to a Download can be carried out in the Frontend or the Backend. When creating or editting a Download in the Backend adding the license selection is in the righthand panel of the General tab. In the Frontend it is in the Additional Data tab. There are two parameters.


License selection is a pull down selection box, as shown on the right

licence 11
'Confirm License'
which is a simple Yes/No pulldown.
When set to Yes the user has to accept the license in order to continue with the downloading.

licence 12

Front End View

The license 'acceptance' occurs in the Summary view which will be automatically shown if you have selected 'Confirm License' as Yes.


The license as shown in the Summary differs depending whether the license is a  Description type, as shown immediately opposite, or a Link type as shown on the far right.

licence 22licence 25

Creating a New License/Editting Existing License

Licenses are accessed in the backend through the jDownloads Control panel by clicking on the button licenses  Button.

This shows a panel like the one opposite.

For a new license click on the button new  button.

To edit an existing license then just click on its title.

A license may have a link and a description but if it does have a link then that takes precedence.

Generally link type licenses are used with what might be refered to as an 'established' or generally accepted licence.

licence 30

Clicking on the New button gives a view as shown opposite

If a link is present jDownloads uses it as the license location otherwise it just shows the description.

Give the license a Title.  If it is a Link type licence then paste the link in the 'Link to License' field.  Then Save and Close.

An example of a Description license is shown below.
add license01

To enter the description just type in the text as if you were writing an article with any appropriate  colours, images and so on.

The view in the Editor of an example is  shown opposite. 



The equivalent code generated is illustrated opposite.

add license02add license03

The view as it would appear in the front end.

The Download button is inactive until the user 'ticks' the I accept box.  If you hover the mouse over the button it will show asbutton download no
add license04


ColinM October 2020 updated July 2021

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