# Legal

## Copyright

Copyright statements should be made where appropriate. The copyright holder for Intersect software must be "Intersect MBO". The copyright year should be the year of the file's creation and does not need to be updated.

## Licenses

Software must be licensed using the Apache 2.0 license. Text-based work such as documentation should be licensed under a Creative Commons license.

### Applying the Apache 2.0 license to work

To apply the Apache 2.0 license to your work, two separate files need to be created in the root of the repository:

(1) a “NOTICE” file containing the following boilerplate notice:

```
Copyright <creation date> Intersect MBO

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License”). 
You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. 
You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 
software distributed under the License is distributed on an 
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, 
either express or implied. See the License for the specific 
language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
```

(2) a “LICENSE” file containing the full license text which can be obtained from [here](http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt).

<details>

<summary>Rationale</summary>

Apache 2.0 is a permissive license that is widely deployed and backed by a strong community. Apache 2.0 allows users the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of it under the terms of the license, without any concern about royalties.

A key advantage of the Apache 2.0 license is that it contains provisions that are absent from many other free and open source licenses (including the MIT license) and which provide more clarity to contributors and users alike.

However, for text we can typically be much less restrictive. For this a permissive license like Creative Commons is much more appropriate.

</details>


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://opensourcecommittee.docs.intersectmbo.org/policies/governance/legal.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.
