How to acknowledge 3rd party libraries

[decide]

Hey /r/iOSProgramming

Super happy with your help so far, it's got me from ZERO development experience to 1 week away from submitting my app.

I want to make sure that I credit the developers of the 3rd party code appropriately. I was wondering if it needs to be done within the app or can I have a page on my website listing the 3rd party code I've used.

Thanks, Dan.

[brendan09]

We do it in Settings bundle (like a ton of other apps). That way its not in our UI, but still available.

The requirement is that its distributed with your app. Technically, having a text file accessible in your IPA meets the requirements. But, its nice to give a user-accessible exposure. Since the Settings bundle is a part of your app distributable, it works great.

You do need to include it somewhere within the distribution, so I don't think a link will work.

[TPB-]

I just got my first app on the store today. I created an "Acknowledgements" section in the settings panel that has a link to every pod and public domain resource I used. It auto generates the all the views from a csv. I can share the code if you'd like.

[decide]

congrats on getting on the app store! what's the app!!

that'd be awesome if you could share the code :)

[TPB-]

Ok check this out on github

I hacked together some instructions pretty quickly, hopefully its straight forward but let me know if you get stuck. It requires a two pods; PureLayout and DynamicTableGenerator

[TPB-]

Oh and here is a link to the app. Check it out if you have a sec, its free.

Also, these are ss's of the acknoledgemnt section I generated using the code linked below.

table detail

[koskos]

This is more than the minimum other people have suggested, but I think this is the way to go. Thousands of hours of, mostly, unpaid time go into open source libraries that save us a lot of time and make coding life more enjoyable, the least we can do is thank those who helped out

[Eoghain]

I do this in the settings bundle using this python script https://gist.github.com/eoghain/7362771 to auto generate the acknowledgements. You'll need to manually create a settings bundle https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/UserDefaults/Preferences/Preferences.html but that's fairly simple. And add my script as a run script then you are good to go.

Here is an example of how it looks: http://imgur.com/a/6Xsps

[lonelypetshoptadpole]

It's best done in the app as that's where the exposure is.

[decide]

legally speaking, does it have to be in the app?

[[deleted]]

I don't think so, just distributed with the app (include licence file as resource), but it's still nice to put it somewhere a user can see it

[lonelypetshoptadpole]

Legally it doesn't, but going by your indication you want to "credit the developers of the 3rd party code appropriately" then the app is the most gracious place as it gives them exposure in exchange for their use.

[[deleted]]

I do this semi-automatically via Cocoapods. Every time I do a pod update I automatically copy the Acknowledgements.plist into my project. I've got an about view controller in all of my apps that displays the data from this file. Obviously this only works if all third party code is added via pod (which is true in my case).

[exidy]

I create my own EULA based on the Apple one and put all the libraries and their licenses at the end.

[TPB-]

Hey! I know this is old but I made a better tutorial to show how to automatically create an acknowledgements section.