The DALICC user manual

Part of the documentation index.

DALICC is a service for working with licenses as data: a curated library of license models, tools that read them, compare them and check whether they fit together, and a composer that writes a new license of your own. This is the manual for all of it.

Who it is for. Anybody using the website, and anybody calling the API with a personal token. No prior knowledge of RDF is needed; the parts that need it say so. A shorter tour of what DALICC is and what each tool does is in INTRODUCTION.md. The HTTP contract is in API.md and the Python client in SDK.md.

If you administer an installation, the pages under /admin are in ADMINISTRATION.md. Installing the service and running the server are an operator's work: DEPLOYMENT.md and OPERATIONS.md.

What DALICC does not do. It is not legal advice. Every model is a reading of a legal text, the compatibility checker answers from the axioms it was given, and a disclaimer on the site says so. Get legal advice before you rely on any of it.

How do I ...?#

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1. What DALICC is#

Four things, in one application:

• A license library. 581 records, of which 290 are distinct licenses and 289 are ports and editions of them. A jurisdiction port is a license adapted to another country's law; an edition is the same text reissued by another body in the same legal system. Two more are test fixtures and are kept out of the lists and the counts. Each record is a model: the asset types it covers, what it permits, what it prohibits, the duties that ride on each permission, and the warranty and liability text quoted from the license.
• Tools that read the models. A faceted search, a side by side comparator, a compatibility checker for a bundle of licenses, and a checker for the dependencies of a code repository.
• A composer. A guided form that writes a license of your own and publishes it at a permanent address.
• An API. Everything the site does, the API does too, with the same data; see API.md.

Nothing on the site needs an account except your own licenses, your own dependency graphs, Text-to-License and License-to-Text (unless the installation opens them to everybody), submissions, correction requests, the inbox and the administration pages. Accounts come by invitation unless the installation has opened sign-up, which is covered from section 11 on.

Identifiers. A curated license has a readable identifier (MIT, Apache-2.0, CC-BY-4.0) and a permanent address, https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/<id>. A license you compose gets a random 32 character identifier at the same kind of address. That address is the license: it resolves for a browser as a page and for a machine as RDF.

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2. Find a license#

By name. /license-library is the list. The box at the top filters by keyword as you type (and without JavaScript when you press the button). The list shows one row per license, with its jurisdiction ports folded underneath: a row saying "12 jurisdiction ports" expands to the ports with their country and the version of the license text they model. Show all records (?ports=all) flattens the list again. The state of the list is in the address, so you can share the view you are looking at by copying the link.

A keyword matches ports as well as parents, and a matching port is shown under its parent even when the parent itself does not match.

What the box searches. A record matches when every word you type occurs, in any case, in one of its names:

• the title (The MIT License),
• the alternative names the record lists (MIT, GNU GPL v2 or later, CC BY-SA 4.0),
• its SPDX identifier (ODbL-1.0 finds the ODC Open Database License, CC0-1.0 the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication),
• its DALICC identifier, typed in full (OdcOpenDatabaseLicense),
• an SPDX identifier the SPDX license list has retired, read through the same table as the identifier box below: GPL-2.0 finds GPL-2.0-only, GPL-2.0+ finds GPL-2.0-or-later,
• a DALICC identifier retired on 2023-04-24, which finds the record that replaced it: ArtisticLicense20 finds Artistic-2.0, AcademicFreeLicense30 finds AFL-3.0.

Two words may match two different names of the same record. The results are ranked by the best of a record's names: a query that is exactly an identifier or a name comes first, then the records whose names hold every word you typed, the closest name first, so "mit license" puts The MIT License above CMU License and X11 License. Editions that match equally well come newest first, so "cc by sa" lists CC BY-SA 4.0 before 3.0, 2.5, 2.0 and 1.0. The punctuation of an identifier counts, because GPL-2.0 and GPL-2.0+ are two different licenses.

When nothing matches. A typo is the usual reason. The page then names your query (No license matches "apahce") and offers up to three licenses whose names come closest: "Did you mean Apache License 1.0, Apache License, Version 1.1 or Apache License, Version 2.0?", each a link to its page. The autocomplete under the box offers the same titles. Jurisdiction ports are never offered there, and a query that resembles no name gets no suggestion at all.

By identifier. Open an unlisted license on the same page takes an identifier and sends you straight to the license. It accepts

• a DALICC identifier (Apache-2.0),
• an SPDX identifier, as a fallback when the DALICC one does not match, including one the SPDX license list has deprecated: GPL-2.0 opens GPL-2.0-only and BSD-2-Clause-FreeBSD opens BSD-2-Clause,
• the 32 character identifier of a composed license,
• a whole license URL, from which the identifier is read,
• a DALICC identifier retired on 2023-04-24: it opens the record that replaced it, or, for the six retired test records nothing replaced, a page that says so.

An SPDX expression with an exception, GPL-2.0-only WITH Classpath-exception-2.0, is not an identifier and the box refuses it. Either open the record under the DALICC identifier, GPL-2.0-only-with-Classpath-exception-2.0, or ask GET /licenselibrary/spdx/<expression>, which resolves the expression for you (API.md).

By what you need to do. That is the questionnaire, section 4.

Unlisted licenses. A license composed with the License Composer appears in no library list, dropdown, autocomplete or search result, on the site or in the API. The only page that lists it is the public profile of the account that published it, so keep the address you were given. Every place that takes an identifier says so.

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3. Read a license page#

/license-library/<id> is the human readable license. It answers first and explains after. From the top:

Ports and editions (port, edition). The banner of a port names the license it adapts and the country whose law it was adapted to. The Creative Commons ports are national versions of 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0: DALICC groups ports under the 4.0 International license of the same elements, so the banner of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Chile says that it is a port of the 2.0 license, that it is grouped under 4.0, and that the legal texts differ while the model states the same permissions, duties and prohibitions for both. An edition says Edition of and names the license it reissues. The parent's page lists them under Jurisdiction ports and editions, as members of the same family, not as texts that say the same.

Where each statement comes from (statement origin). Every permission, prohibition and duty carries a small mark. From the text means the statement is the library's reading of a sentence of the license; where the record keeps that sentence, the "?" beside it quotes it. By library convention means the text is not explicit and the library states it by a convention it applies to every license of the kind; the "?" names the convention. Under Prohibitions the "?" starts with Not permitted: and the act, so a definition never reads as a grant. A patent retaliation clause is not a ban on suing: it ends the patent license when a patent claim is brought, so the page shows it under Further terms as Patent license ends if you sue.

What applies by default. A license states what its text states, and most texts are silent about most acts. What follows from that silence is a question of law, so DALICC keeps it out of the record and in the dependency graph, where a rule says which act it is about, what applies, in which territory and on the strength of which statute or principle. The section lists what the core graph's rules supply for this license: today that is one rule, which reads a license that says nothing about endorsement as granting no right to use the licensor's name. A compatibility check draws the same conclusions and says on every finding which side came from the text and which from a rule. Section 18 describes the seven further graphs that hold the rules proposed for the biggest markets.

Downloads. The operations row offers the model as JSON-LD, Turtle and RDF/XML, and as Text, which is the license written out in words (section 19a). The same serialisations come out of the API at GET /licenselibrary/license/<id>. Next to the row there is a Write this as a license text link, which opens License-to-Text on this license. It needs an account and says so when you are not signed in; the Text download is the alternative without one.

The page ends with one sentence: nothing on it is legal advice, what a license means is decided by its text, and you should ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.

Use this license. The page writes the statement out for you, so that a machine can read your choice:

• a JSON sidecar to drop next to the work, naming the license URI, the title, the SPDX identifier, your asset and, only where the license really requires attribution, the attribution line. Fill in the two boxes above it and press Download license.json;
• the same statement as RDF, in Turtle and in JSON-LD;
• an HTML attribution snippet, shown only when attribution is required, so nobody pastes a credit line a permissive license never asked for;
• a badge, /license-library/<id>/badge.svg, with the markdown and HTML embed code next to it.

Older versions. A curated record is versioned. View in the History section opens /license-library/<id>/versions/<n>, which renders the archived model read only, with a banner and the downloads of that version. Asking for the current version number sends you back to the license page, so there is one address per version. /license-library/changes lists the recent changes across the whole library, filtered by the kind of reason. Each change names the statement in words ("Prohibition: Promote"), and a hand edit links the summary of its version on the record page, at /license-library/<id>#version-<n>.

Something wrong? The review box of every curated page carries Request a correction when you are signed in, which opens the structured form of section 20; without an account the same place offers Report an issue, an e-mail link.

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4. Search by what you need to do#

/license-search asks a different question from the library list. There you look a license up by its name; here you say what you need to do with the work, and the search returns the licenses that let you do it.

1. Asset types. Creative work, dataset, software. All three are on; switch off what you are not licensing.
2. Actions. A three state switch per action: permitted, does not matter, prohibited. Every switch opens at does not matter on purpose, because a search that demands eleven permissions at once returns nothing.
3. Duties. Two state switches under the action they belong to: attribution, notice, source code, rename, modification notice, compliant license.
4. License wide duties. Share alike.

Press Search. Results come back grouped the way the library list is grouped, parents with their ports underneath.

Two rules worth knowing.

• Share Alike and Change License exclude each other. The page disables one when you choose the other, and a submission that contains both is refused with an explanation rather than silently corrected.
• Five nested questions (Display, Present, Modified Works, Derivative Works, Promote) have no facet in the search API. The page still asks them, but it uses the answers to annotate the results rather than to filter them: for the first 25 results it adds a note such as "This license does not prohibit Display". In the composer the same questions are real, and what you answer there goes into the model.

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5. Compare licenses#

/license-comparator?ids=MIT,Apache-2.0,GPL-3.0-only puts the licenses side by side: the question tree down the first column, one column per license, and a mark per cell (granted or required, prohibited, not applicable). A row the licenses disagree on is flagged, so the differences are the thing you see first.

• Add a license by name with the autocomplete, or by identifier with Add by id, which is how an unlisted license joins a comparison. A name is read the way the License Compatibility Checker reads it (section 6).
• An identifier the library does not hold gets no column; the page says it was left out.
• The first column and the header stay put while you scroll sideways, and the whole table prints.
• The comparator also opens as a dialog from the License Compatibility Checker, over the bundle you have there.
• Every mark is a statement of the license text. Where a license says nothing the row is not applicable, and a compatibility check answers it by default rule instead; the note under the legend says so and links the dependency graph.

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6. Check whether licenses fit together#

The License Compatibility Checker, at /license-compatibility-checker, answers the question that sends most people to DALICC: may I combine these works, and what may I publish the result under? It has three steps. Until 2026-09-25 it was called the License Mixer; a link to /license-mixer still works and opens the same bundle here.

1. Define your license bundle. Add licenses by name with the autocomplete, or by identifier with Add to bundle by id (the way in for an unlisted license). A typed name is matched, in this order, against the identifier, the title, the SPDX identifier (a deprecated one such as GPL-3.0+ included), the other names a record carries ("MIT license" is The MIT License) and only then the start of a title; a license found by the start of its title is added with a sentence saying which one it was, so you can take it out again. Your bundle is listed with an expandable summary per license (its permissions, prohibitions, license-wide duties and the duties attached to permissions) and a link to remove one. An identifier the library does not hold is marked "No license with this identifier is in the library.", and the bundle is not checked until it is removed or corrected; an entry of the address that is not an identifier at all is named and left out.

2. Check the compatibility of your bundle. Press Check compatibility, or open a link to a bundle, which runs the check for you. The reasoner reports every pair of statements that cannot both hold, and the License Compatibility Checker sorts each one into one of three kinds:

• a conflict (glossary): no combined work can meet both statements. One license requires what the other prohibits, or two licenses each require the whole work to stay under themselves (GPL-2.0-only and GPL-3.0-only, the ODbL and CC BY-SA 4.0) and no "or later" option or compatibility clause leads from one to the other;
• a restriction (glossary): one license permits an act the other prohibits, so the combined work may not do it. "The MIT License permits Change license; GNU General Public License 3 prohibits it, so the combined work may not change its license. The permissive work can go into the copyleft one, not the other way round." That is not a reason not to combine them;
• a finding about one license alone: a license that contradicts itself. It is shown, and it does not decide the verdict.

The verdict names the worst kind: Cannot be combined (at least one conflict), Can be combined with restrictions (only restrictions) or No conflict found among the statements DALICC models (nothing found). A bundle of one license is told that it has nothing to be combined with. Every finding says whether it is direct (both statements are in the texts) or derived (it follows through the dependency graph, and the tooltip names the step, for example "Grant use is the same act as Sublicense"), and by default rule where one side is not a statement of a license text but one a default rule of the graph supplied for an act that license says nothing about. Nothing in any finding is legal advice. A pair the reasoner reaches twice is listed once.

Under every verdict, What you must do lists the duties of the combined work: every license-wide duty and every duty a permission carries, once each, with the licenses that impose it ("Attribution (The MIT License, Apache License, Version 2.0)"). What the check cannot see says where to stop trusting it: compatibility no license states, clauses the vocabulary cannot express (a ban on selling or on production use), and the license texts themselves. Read the texts before you combine the works.

Compatibility a license grants by name, in one direction, is seen where its record states it: CC BY-SA 4.0 lets an adaptation go under GPL-3.0, the LGPL lets its code be relicensed under the GPL, and AGPL-3.0 and GPL-3.0 allow each other. Two licenses that each keep the whole work under themselves then combine, with the restriction "The combined work has to be released under GPL-3.0" (or under either one, when each names the other). With a target license, the named direction has to lead to the target: GPL-3.0 code cannot be released under CC BY-SA 4.0.

3. Check and download your license statement. Unless the bundle cannot be combined you may name a target license: the license you want to publish the combined work under. It comes from the dropdown of curated licenses, or from the field next to it that takes the identifier of an unlisted one. The step says, for every license of the bundle, whether it can be released under the target, gives the verdict over the bundle and the target together, names a license that is not written for an asset type the target covers ("The MIT License is not written for Dataset, which Apache License, Version 2.0 covers.") as a note, and Download statement gives you statements.txt with the verdict, what you must do and what the check cannot see, to keep with the work.

Choosing the rules. The Dependency graph select at the top decides which axioms and which default rules the reasoner uses: the core graphs for everybody, your own as well once you are signed in (section 18). The choice travels in the address (?graph=) and is printed in statements.txt, so a downloaded statement always says what it was derived with. How a derived conflict comes about is walked through at /reasoning (section 11).

Sharing and losing work. The bundle lives in the address (/license-compatibility-checker?ids=MIT,Apache-2.0), so a link carries it to a colleague, and opening the link checks the bundle again. The browser also remembers the last bundle, so a detour to a license page does not lose it.

When something is down. If the reasoner cannot be reached the page says so inside the step and keeps your bundle; it does not become an error page. If the license store is unreachable the tools fall back to a copy of the records and say so.

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7. Compose a license#

/license-composer writes a license of your own. It is the same question tree as the search, read the other way round: there you filter, here you decide. If you already have the text of a license, Text-to-License reads it and fills this form in for you, and you review the proposal before anything is saved (section 19).

Start from a library license. The first field of the form takes the name of a curated record, and Load fills the whole form in from it: every permission, every prohibition, every duty where it hangs, the disclaimer texts and the provenance fields. Type a name and pick it from the list, or give a DALICC identifier such as Apache-2.0; pressing Enter in the field loads it too, and nothing else has to be filled in first. Two things are not copied. The title stays empty, because what you are about to write is a variant and needs a name of its own. The license your license is provided under stays the one the record states for itself, CC BY 4.0 on every DALICC record: that is the license of the model document you are adapting, not of the terms it describes. Loading replaces everything you have typed so far, writes nothing anywhere, and needs no account.

1. Provenance information. Title, creator, licensor, licensee, validity (dates, a number of months, or unlimited), region and country, and the license your license is itself provided under. Below those, six fields for a license that already exists somewhere: who published it, its SPDX identifier, the version of the license itself, the address of its text, where this model comes from, and the other names it is known under, one per line. All six may stay empty. They are stored the way the curated records store them, so a model you write here reads back like one of ours.
2. Permissions and duties. Per action: permitted (a tick), not addressed (a dash: the license says nothing about the action) or prohibited (a cross), with the duties that ride on each permission. A duty always hangs on a permission, never on a prohibition.
3. License wide duties. Share alike and the rest.
4. Further statements from the reading. What the questions above have no switch for: a duty under a permission with no box for it, an action with no question of its own, and a duty the questions have stopped offering, which is how a draft saved while there was still a box for it keeps the statement. Each gets a row with the quote it came from, the permission it hangs on and a box that keeps it. They are part of the license, so the consistency check includes them and so does everything you save, download or publish. Clear the box on a row you disagree with and it is gone. The expert view below shows the same statements as ordinary rows.
5. Disclaimer. Warranty disclaimer, liability limitation, any additional clauses.
6. License text. The license in words, kept with the license itself. Write this as a license text sends the form as it stands and brings the text back into the field on this page, so you can correct it before anybody reads it. That button needs an account, unless the installation opens License-to-Text to everybody; typing or pasting your own text into the field needs none. The field is optional and holds up to 60,000 characters. Whatever is in it when you check, download, save or publish is stored with the license as dalicc:licenseText; the license page then shows it under License text, and GET /licenselibrary/license/<id>?format=text answers with it. Two more buttons do their work in your browser and ask DALICC for nothing: Download as text saves the field as a .txt file named after your title, and Remove text empties it after asking whether you mean it. Writing a text publishes nothing, and the names you entered are left out of what is sent (section 19a).

Expert mode#

Above the questions there is a switch with two settings: Questions and Expert. It decides only how you state your terms. The title, the asset types, the validity, the disclaimer texts and the license text are the same fields in both, and switching keeps everything you have entered.

The expert view shows your whole license as a tree instead of a fixed set of questions:

• Permissions. One row per permission, each with the duties that ride on it. Add duty on a row adds a nested duty under that permission.
• Prohibitions. One row per prohibition.
• Duties of the license. One row per duty that applies to the license as a whole rather than to one permission.

The Promotion specification, which the questions ask for under Promote, has a field of its own at the end of the Disclaimer section in the expert view.

Each row has a search box. Type a few letters and pick the action from the list: it holds every term of the DALICC vocabulary that may be used at that level, and the definition appears under the row once you have chosen one. Add permission, Add prohibition and Add duty add a row at the end of a block, and Remove takes one away. Enter in a row adds the next row of the same kind under it instead of sending the form. After Remove the cursor moves to the row that took its place, or to the button that adds one when the block is empty, and every Remove and Add duty button names the row it belongs to for a screen reader ("Remove permission Distribute").

Nothing is hidden here, which is why the view exists. A license loaded from the library, or read out of a text by Text-to-License, often states things the questions have no switch for, and in the question view those sit in Further statements from the reading. Switch to the expert view and they are ordinary rows you can change like any other; switch back and whatever the questions cannot hold returns to that panel. Your license is the same license either way.

Two rows the tree does not offer, because a DALICC license cannot state them: a duty under a prohibition, and a duty under another duty. A prohibited act never happens, so a duty conditioned on it could never apply.

A row with no action yet, an action DALICC does not know, or a duty term used as a permission stops the buttons: the list next to the editor names the row, and nothing is checked, saved or published until you fix it. Without JavaScript the tree is shown as one text field holding the same statements as JSON, and every button still works.

The switch remembers itself in your browser, so the composer opens the way you left it, including when Text-to-License hands a reading over and when you re-open a draft. /license-composer?mode=expert opens the expert view straight away.

Checking, saving and publishing#

Three buttons, and a fourth when you are signed in:

Three formats. Download RDF has three buttons: Turtle saves a .ttl file, JSON-LD a .jsonld file and RDF/XML a .rdf file. All three hold the same model, the one the check and Publish would use, and the JSON-LD uses the same context as the JSON-LD downloads of the license library. The file is named after your title, for example my-data-licence.ttl, or after the draft when you are editing one.

Continue from a downloaded model. Under Start from a library license, choose a file you downloaded earlier (.ttl, .jsonld, .json, .rdf or .xml, up to 2 MB) and press Load file. The form is filled in with everything the file holds, title included, in the view you are in, and the note beside the control says "Loaded title from file name." A file that is not RDF, or holds no license or more than one, is refused there in a sentence and your form stays as it was. A term DALICC does not know is named in the note and left out; the rest is loaded. The file is read on the server and forgotten: nothing is stored, and no account is needed.

Publishing also asks you to tick one box, whether or not you are signed in: the license model and the creator name you typed go public permanently under CC BY 4.0, and that is not something to do by mistake. Press Publish without it and nothing is written (privacy notice). The other three buttons never ask, because none of them publishes anything.

Where the answer appears. A button answers where it is: Load at the top of the form, Load file under its own control, Write this as a license text inside the License text section, and the four buttons above under My resulting license. When a field needs correcting, the message is on the field itself and the block next to the button lists those fields as links that take you there. The page scrolls the message into view and puts the keyboard focus on it, and a refusal re-renders the form with your values intact.

When the license store does not answer. Save draft and Publish then come back to the same page with every answer still in the form, the draft you were editing and the ticked box included, and a message under the buttons headed Nothing was saved or Nothing was published. Nothing was written: no draft appears under My licenses. Press Download RDF to keep a copy on your computer and try again in a few minutes. A name Load cannot find is answered at the top of the form under Nothing was loaded.

What a contradiction looks like. The Consistency panel lists every contradiction, naming the two statements of your license that clash, for example Permission: Distribute and Prohibition: Distribute. Where the dependency graph was needed to find the clash, the step that connects them is printed underneath, for example "Distribute is included in Use." The panel keeps up as you edit, so you can watch a contradiction disappear. The select next to Check consistency decides which graph it reasons with, and what counts as a contradiction is explained on /reasoning (section 11).

What you get. A 32 character identifier and a permanent address. The license is unlisted: no library list, no search result, no dropdown; only your public profile lists what you published. Keep the address. If you were signed in you own it, can share it and can version it (section 17); composed anonymously it has no owner and nobody can claim it later.

Composing without an account can be switched off for an installation: an administrator sets that, and the composer then asks you to sign in (DEPLOYMENT.md). Where the installation is configured for it, the publish step also carries a reCAPTCHA.

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8. Check a repository's dependencies#

The GitHub License Compatibility Checker is at /github-license-compatibility-checker. This is the License Compatibility Checker applied to a repository: the licenses of its dependencies are checked against the license you choose. It takes a GitHub repository, as owner/name (for example psf/requests) or as its URL (https://github.com/psf/requests), and reports

• the repository and its main language,
• every dependency with the license the package index reports for it, and the DALICC record it resolves to,
• the compatibility verdict over all of those licenses together, in the same rendering the License Compatibility Checker uses: conflicts, restrictions, what you must do and what the check cannot see (section 6).

Your target license. Under the repository field you may name the license you would publish the combined work under, either from the dropdown or by typing the identifier of an unlisted one. The compatibility check then runs over the dependency licenses and that license together, which is the question the License Compatibility Checker asks, and the result is reported in two parts: Between the dependencies, and With your target license for the conflicts the target itself is one side of. A target counts as a license of its own, so a repository with a single recognised dependency license still has two licenses to compare. Leave the field empty and the page checks the dependencies against each other alone.

The lookup reads a public package index, which needs an access key that an administrator configures. Without one the page says the checker is switched off on this installation and the button is disabled; the API answers 503 and names the setting.

A link to the page with ?repo=owner/name opens it with the field filled and the check run, which is what the Check tile on the home page submits. Until 2026-09-25 the page was called the GitHub License Checker; /github-license-checker still works and leads here.

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9. My Bookmarks#

/bookmarks is a shortlist of licenses, and it is in the Licenses menu. Add bookmark on a license page or a result card puts a license on the list, Remove bookmark takes it off again, and the page shows you what is on it. The old "My Dashboard" address still works.

The list lives in your browser only. Nothing is sent to the server, nothing is tied to an account, and clearing your browser data clears it. Export as JSON writes the list to a file and Import JSON reads one back, which is how it moves to another machine.

"My licenses" is a different thing: those are the licenses you own on the platform, and they need an account. See Your licenses.

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10. The DALICC vocabulary#

/ns is the vocabulary: every term DALICC uses to model a license, with its definition and the term it derives from. Term addresses are fragments, so https://dalicc.net/ns#promote is the term itself, and /ns/<term> is a convenience redirect to it.

The page serves the vocabulary as data too: ask for Turtle, RDF/XML or JSON-LD (with an Accept header or ?format=) and you get the authored file, comments included. The vocabulary is versioned exactly like a license: /ns/versions, /ns/versions/<n> and /ns/changelog, with a history section on the page.

The vocabulary is the single source of truth for the terms. Everything that offers you a list of actions (the composer, the search, the dependency graph editor, the translation assistant) reads it, so a term defined there shows up everywhere. How it is written and extended is in DATA.md.

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Accounts. The six sections that follow are about who DALICC thinks you are: how an account comes about, what it may do, and how a session and an API token are protected.

11. Concepts#

Account. An e-mail address, a display name, a password and a role. Accounts come by invitation unless the administrators have opened sign-up; then the sign-up page, and where one is set up an identity provider, create accounts as well. Nothing creates an account without an invitation, the sign-up page or an administrator behind it, and every page that tells a visitor how to get one says which of these the site offers.

Roles. Two, deliberately coarse. A member owns the licenses they created, shares them, and manages their own API tokens and profile. An admin manages people, invitations, settings and the audit log, and may act on any license. Section 12 has the whole list.

License roles are a second, independent axis: owner, editor and viewer on each license, whatever your role on the platform. Section 17 has the matrix and the life of a license.

Anonymous use stays possible. Searching, comparing, mixing and, unless the installation says otherwise, composing a license need no account.

No e-mail address is ever shown publicly. A license page shows the owner's display name (or "unnamed") and the profile address https://dalicc.net/users/{user_id}. Your e-mail address is visible only to you and to administrators, and no public page shows one.

How reasoning works. Every answer DALICC gives about conflicts rests on two things. The first is the rules of a license: each rule is a permission, a prohibition or a duty over one named action. The second is a dependency graph, which says how those actions relate to each other. /reasoning explains both without jargon, in five steps with a picture: what a rule is, what the four kinds of statement in a graph mean, and how the checker tells a direct conflict from one derived through the graph. Two tools ask the question, the compatibility check of the License Compatibility Checker (section 6) and the consistency check of the License Composer (section 7), and both follow the graph they were given. A graph is one reading of how the actions relate: another legal reading, another jurisdiction or the practice of one organisation can call for a graph of its own (section 18).

Where your pages are. Once you are signed in, the last entry of the main menu is Account, and it holds the six things you open from anywhere: Account settings, Inbox with its unread count, My licenses, My dependency graphs, the Admin area if you are an administrator, and Log out. Everything else is one click further in, in the column that runs down the left of every page behind the login, under You, Your work and, for an administrator, Administration. The page you are reading is marked in the column. On a narrow screen the column becomes an Account menu button above the page.

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12. Who may do what#

An administrator sees the same table at /admin/settings.

Nobody, administrators included, can read an existing password: only a one-way hash of it is kept. An administrator can replace a password (with a temporary one that must be changed at the next login) or create a reset link, and both are shown exactly once.

Every value DALICC shows once, a temporary password, a reset link, an invitation link or a new API token, stands in a box with a Copy button beside it. Pressing it puts the value on the clipboard and the button reads Copied for a moment. If the browser will not let it copy, the button says Press Ctrl+C instead, and the value is selectable text either way. Copy it before you leave the page: none of these is ever shown again.

The name you publish under#

Your account has one name, and it is the only thing about you that a published license shows. Every license you publish carries it as the publisher, so a reader can tell who stands behind the document. Three rules keep that name yours.

• One account, one name. Two accounts cannot publish under the same name. The comparison ignores upper and lower case, extra spaces and the way the letters are encoded, so "Ada Lovelace" and "ada lovelace" are the same name.
• An address can only be your own. A name with an @ in it is read as an e-mail address, and the only address you may use as your name is the one you log in with. Nobody can put somebody else's address, or the address of somebody who has just been invited, on a license page.
• A name a published license already carries belongs to its publisher. Some published licenses have no account behind them, so their publisher names are held for everybody. If one of them is yours, ask an administrator to release it to your account.

You set the name on /account, an administrator can change it for you, and the invitation form asks for it when the account is set up. In each of those places a name that is not free is refused, and the message says which of the three rules it ran into. Renaming yourself changes nothing that is already published: a license keeps the name it was published with.

Your public profile#

/account shows a public profile address, https://dalicc.net/users/<your id>, and it is a link. That address is how every license you publish names you, so it is in documents other people hold, and it opens a page anybody can read. The page shows your name, the month your account was created in, and the licenses and dependency graphs you have published, each one linked. It shows nothing else: not your e-mail address, not when you last logged in, not your role, and none of your drafts. A license somebody shared with you belongs on their profile, not on yours.

The same address answers as data as well. Ask it with Accept: text/turtle, application/ld+json or application/rdf+xml, or add ?format=ttl, ?format=json-ld or ?format=rdf-xml, and you get a small document: you as a foaf:Agent with your foaf:name, and one statement per published license, written exactly as the license document writes it. An identifier no account has is a 404.

If you delete your account the address keeps working, because the licenses that name it are still published. It then shows the neutral label your row keeps, and nothing about you at all.

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13. Invitations#

How you get an account depends on how the installation is set up. On dalicc.net, and wherever nothing else was chosen, accounts are given out by invitation: ask an administrator through the contact form, and follow the steps below. An installation can also open sign-up. Its login page then has a Create an account button, and the steps are in Signing up yourself further down.

An invitation is a random link; only a hash of it is stored. The link itself exists in exactly one place: the mail that was sent, or the line the page showed the inviter once.

1. /admin/invitations: address plus role, one form.
2. Where the installation can send mail, the invitee gets one. Where it cannot, the page shows the link and says so; pass it on through a channel you trust.
3. The invitee opens /invite/<token>, sees who invited them and in which role, and sets a name and a password. The account is created and they are logged straight in. The form also asks them to confirm that they have read the privacy notice and that the name they choose is shown on every license they publish. Without that tick no account is created.
4. The invitation is marked accepted and the link stops working.

The name asked for in step 3 follows the rules in section 12: it has to be free. A name that belongs to another account, or to the publisher of a license that is not yours, is refused with the reason. The invitation link keeps working after a refusal, so you can open it again and choose another name.

An invitation expires after a week by default (an administrator sets the period) and can be used once. An administrator can withdraw a pending one, or create a new link for the same address, which withdraws the old one so only the newest mail works.

An invitation for an address that already has an account is legitimate and useful: it is how a deactivated account is invited back, and accepting it reactivates the account and sets a new password. An invitation never lowers an existing account's role.

Signing up yourself#

Where an administrator has opened sign-up, /register asks for the same things an invitation does: the name you publish under (the rules of section 12 apply), your address, a password (section 14) and the tick that confirms you have read the privacy notice. What happens next depends on what the administrators chose, and the page lists it next to the form:

• Confirming your address. A link goes to the address you gave. Open it and press Confirm my address, and you are signed in. The link works once and for a day; if it runs out, log in with your address and password and a new one is sent. An account whose address is never confirmed is deleted a week after its last link runs out.
• Waiting for approval. You can sign in, compose and save drafts at once, but you cannot publish until an administrator has approved the account. You get a mail when it is approved, and also when it is not, in which case the account and its drafts are deleted.
• A check against automatic sign-ups may sit on the form. It is the same check as on the composer, the form says what it sends where, and the privacy notice says more.
• Only some addresses may be allowed, for example those of the member institutions. The form says which.

If the address you type already has an account, the page answers as if it did not and the owner of the address gets a mail saying that somebody tried, so the form does not tell a stranger who has an account here.

Signing in with your organisation's account#

An installation can also offer Sign in with the identity provider on the login page, and Sign up with the identity provider on the sign-up page. The button takes you to your organisation's sign-in page and back. If DALICC already knows your address, you are signed in to that account, and from then on it is recognised even if your address changes at your organisation. If it does not, and sign-up is open, one more page asks for the name you publish under and the privacy notice tick; there is no confirmation mail, because your organisation has already confirmed the address, but an administrator may still have to approve the account. Where sign-up is closed, the provider signs in existing members only.

When the provider is the only way in, the password form refuses members and says so. An account created through the provider has no password; to delete it, sign in through your organisation and confirm on /account/delete within 15 minutes (see Your data). Deleting your account also removes the link between it and your organisation's identifier, and the account export lists that link under identity_provider.

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14. Passwords#

• A password is stored only as a strong one-way hash, never as the password itself.
• At least 12 characters; the address, the local part of the address and the person's own name are refused, as are strings built from fewer than five distinct characters. Length is the only thing that really matters, so a short sentence is a good password.
• A password is never logged, never returned, never shown in the interface and never put in an audit entry.
• A wrong password and an unknown address produce the same message and take the same amount of time.
• Login is rate limited to 10 attempts per minute per client address.
• Changing or resetting a password ends every other session of that account.

Forgotten password. /forgot-password always answers the same way, whether or not the address is known. Where the installation can send mail, a one-shot link valid for a day is sent; creating a new link invalidates the previous one. Where it cannot, the page says to contact an administrator, who can produce the same link from the account page.

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15. Sessions, cookies and staying signed in#

Signing in gives your browser two cookies and nothing else. There is no session table on the server, so nothing about you is kept between one request and the next. One cookie says which account you are signed in as and runs out after fourteen days by default; the other carries a random value that each form you submit has to send back, so that another website cannot make your browser act in your name. Neither can be read by JavaScript, and a browser sends them to DALICC and to nowhere else. How long a session lasts, and whether the cookies are restricted to secure connections, is something an administrator sets.

Signing out everywhere. Log out everywhere on your account page ends every session you have, on every device, at once. The same happens by itself when you change your password, when a password reset completes, when an administrator sets a temporary password for you, and when an account is switched off. Log out of this device on the same page, or Log out in the menu, ends only the session on the device you are using.

"Reload the page and try again." A form whose protection value no longer matches is refused with that message. It usually means the page sat open for a very long time, or that you signed in again in another tab. Nothing you typed was sent on; reload the page and submit it once more.

Where you are sent. Open a page that needs an account while you are signed out and you land on the sign-in form; once you are in, you are taken on to the page you asked for. Only addresses on this site are accepted there, so the form cannot be used to send you somewhere else. If an administrator gave you a temporary password, every account page sends you to the password form until you have chosen one of your own.

How the cookies are signed and how form protection is implemented is in SECURITY.md.

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16. API tokens and calling the API#

A token looks like dalicc_ followed by 40 random letters and digits. Only a hash of it is stored; the first eight characters are kept so that the list at /account/tokens can tell your tokens apart. The token itself is shown once, right after it is created, with a Copy button next to it, and the column Token (first characters) in the list shows only those first characters, so a token you did not copy cannot be read back and has to be revoked and replaced. Revoking is immediate, and a token stops working the moment its account is deactivated.

Send the token in the Authorization header, as Bearer dalicc_.... Without one, or with a revoked one, the answer is 401 and its body says what to send.

Requests made with a token are counted against your account and written to a request log that keeps the account, the token's row, the path without its query, the method, the status and the time. The log is trimmed to the last seven days, and the daily figures that outlive it hold no personal reference (privacy notice).

Every successful call updates the "last used" time shown beside the token. The endpoints that take a token are the ones that act for you: composing a license (POST /licenselibrary/composer), listing your own (GET /licenselibrary/mine), withdrawing one of yours, your dependency graphs and Text-to-License. Everything that only searches, reads or reasons needs no token at all. The request and response shapes are in API.md.

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Your own work. Everything you make with an account: licenses, dependency graphs, translations, and the conversations with the curators about them.

17. Your licenses: roles, sharing and versions#

A license and an account are two different things. The account roles above (admin, member) say what somebody may do with DALICC; the license roles say what they may do with one particular license. They are independent: a member owns what they composed, and an administrator may act on anything.

The three roles#

The split is deliberate: the creator formulates the terms and the owner approves them. That is why an editor cannot publish and cannot share, and why publishing a version somebody else drafted is always the owner's act.

Exactly one account owns a license and everybody else holds a role on it. A transfer moves ownership and leaves the previous owner behind as an editor, so nobody is locked out of work they did.

The life of a license#

Draft. Private to you and the people you shared it with. It has no public page and appears in no list, no search result and no dereference. Saving again replaces it; the identifier never changes. Every save is kept as a revision, so replacing it never loses the wording it had before (see Revisions below).

Published. The license gets its permanent address, https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/<id>, and is unlisted: it is in no library list and no search result, and only your public profile lists it, so keep the address. The document names you as its owner by your profile address, never by your e-mail address. It cannot be edited afterwards.

New version. "Edit" on a published license copies it into a fresh draft with a new identifier. When you publish that draft, the previous version is marked superseded and the two point at each other. Both addresses keep working forever, which is the point: a contract that names version 1 can still be read years later.

Superseded (glossary). A newer version replaces this one. The page of the old version says A newer version exists, links the new one and says that rights already granted under the old version are not affected by the new one.

Withdrawn (glossary). The publisher no longer offers the license for new uses. The License owner or an administrator sets it with Withdraw this license on the manage page, with an optional reason. The page says Withdrawn by its publisher, gives the date and says that whether rights already granted continue is decided by the license's own terms, which stay readable. Nothing is deleted. Naming a successor in the same form makes the license superseded rather than withdrawn.

The two states share one flag in the data, owl:deprecated true, and the address of the form is still /my/licenses/<id>/deprecate, so older links and API clients keep working; docs/DATA.md has the mapping.

License owner (glossary). The record page names the account that holds a composed license as its License owner: the account that publishes and maintains it on DALICC. DALICC does not check that this account holds the rights it licenses, and it does not review the terms.

Revisions: every save is kept#

A draft is rewritten in place on every save, so DALICC takes a snapshot first. The manage page of a license lists them, newest first:

Three things can be done with one:

• View renders it read only, on the same page the public license page uses, with a banner saying which revision it is and that it is not published.
• Turtle downloads it exactly as it was saved.
• Restore as current draft copies it back into the draft. It really is a copy: the revision you restored from stays in the list, and the state it replaced is appended as a new revision first, so a restore can itself be undone. Nothing is ever deleted.

An owner, an editor and an administrator can see the revision list; a viewer cannot.

Over the API the same list is GET /licenselibrary/mine/{id}/revisions (see API.md).

When an administrator edits your license#

An administrator may open any license in the composer, save drafts, publish new versions and withdraw them. That is how the DALICC team can correct a license it is asked about without taking it over. It is never silent: the revision is attributed to them with a badge in the list, the manage page shows the owner a notice naming who edited it and when, and the audit log records the publish with the administrator as the actor. The owner can restore any earlier revision, so an edit they disagree with is undone in one step.

Ownership does not change, and the published document still names the owner as its owner. An administrator editing a license is an edit, not a transfer.

A walkthrough#

1. Log in and open License Composer (or My licenses then New license).
2. Fill the form in and press Save draft. You land on the manage page of your license, /my/licenses/<id>.
3. Share it: enter a colleague's address and pick Editor or Viewer. If they have an account they see it at once under Shared with you; if not, an invitation is created and, when no mail can be sent, the link is shown to you once to pass on.
4. Edit draft re-opens the composer with everything where you left it.
5. Tick the box that publishes the license model and the creator name permanently under CC BY 4.0, the same box the composer shows, and press Publish. Without the tick nothing is published. You land on the public page.
6. Later, press Create new version, change what must change, and publish again. Version 1 keeps its address and gains a banner pointing at version 2.
7. If terms must be withdrawn without a successor, press Withdraw this license, optionally with a reason.

Actions that ask first. Removing a person, transferring ownership and withdrawing a license each ask a question before anything happens, saying what the action does and what stops working. Answer Cancel and nothing is sent. Revoking an API token asks the same way. Without JavaScript the button acts at once.

Where to find things#

/my/licenses lists everything you own and everything shared with you, with status, version and your role; /my/licenses/{id} is the manage page, with the details, the version timeline, the people and every action you are allowed. The answer to a button on that page is shown in the section of the button, People for sharing, Revisions for a restore, and the page opens there. Two more addresses are worth keeping: /license-composer?draft={id} opens the composer with that draft loaded, and /my/licenses/{id}/revisions/{r} shows one saved state read only. Once published, the license is at /license-library/{id}.

These lists, the revision and people tables, and the other tables of records on the site sort by a column when you press its heading (press again to reverse the order); the browser remembers the last sort of each table for your next visit.

Over the API, the same licenses are GET /licenselibrary/mine, and POST /licenselibrary/composer composes one with a token (see API.md).

Every one of these acts is written to the record an administrator can read, and no entry there ever holds a password, a token or the text of a license (ADMINISTRATION.md).

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18. Dependency graphs#

A dependency graph is what the compatibility checker reasons with. It carries two kinds of statement. An axiom says which actions include, imply, equal or contradict which other actions. A default rule (glossary) says what applies to an action a license is silent about: which action, what applies, in which territory, and which statute or principle it rests on. Change either and every answer the service gives changes, which is why a graph is an owned, versioned object exactly like a license.

Nothing a default rule states is legal advice. It is the library's reading of a legal default, named with the source it rests on, and a rule marked Proposed is a question for a legal reviewer rather than an answer (adopted, proposed).

Two pages carry that name, one for reading and one for writing. The Dependency Graph Viewer at /dependency-graph shows a graph in full: every statement grouped by its relation, the diagram, the Turtle download, the same data as JSON and the version history. It does that for the core graphs and for any graph you are allowed to see. Every graph is complete: it holds every axiom and every rule a check under it reads. The page of a jurisdiction graph, and the Viewer when one is chosen, therefore opens on what the graph does to the core graph: What this graph adds (its default rules, each with its status, Proposed or Adopted, its legal basis and a plain explanation), then What it removes and What it replaces when it does either, each with the legal reason, and then its axioms, folded under a heading such as "46 axioms, the same as the core graph" (or "44 axioms: the core graph's without the two listed above"), and the rules it keeps from the core graph. Its Turtle download is the complete graph with a comment that names the core version and the difference file it was built from, and the manage page says in one line what the graph adds. Every graph page and the Viewer link to Compare graphs (below). The Dependency Graph Editor at /dependency-graph/editor is the entry page of the writing side: it says what you can do with a graph of your own and leads to your graphs at /my/dependency-graphs, or to the login if you have not signed in yet. What the reasoning itself does with a graph is explained at /reasoning.

Core graphs and your own#

The editor changes a graph's statements and default rules, not what the graph says about itself. Its title, description and date and, for a jurisdiction graph, the core graph and version it was built from and the axioms it removes are kept from the version before when a new version is saved or published; everything else is written as a whole, because the graph is complete. Every default rule has an explanation field beside its basis: two or three plain sentences on what the rule does to a license that is silent, why the law leads there, and what somebody combining licenses will notice. It is shown next to the rule on the graph pages, in the comparator and wherever the rule fires, and a rule of a core graph cannot be saved without one. The editor of a jurisdiction graph says that the graph's source of truth is its difference file in the DALICC repository: an administrator's edit changes the graph on the server at once and is folded back into that file afterwards.

dg_default is the core graph that ships with the service, and it is what a caller who chooses nothing reasons with. It is at version 2, which holds the review of 2026-09-23 that read every action of the vocabulary against the graph, and the endorsement rule with its explanation, its legal basis and the name of the person who adopted it; version 1 is the graph as it stood before the reviews of 2026. It cannot be deprecated: withdrawing it would silently change every answer the service gives.

Comparing two graphs#

Compare graphs at /dependency-graph/compare, in the Reasoning menu, puts two graphs side by side the way the License Comparator puts licenses: any two you may read, the core graph, a jurisdiction graph, or one of your own, shared with you or published. Without a choice it compares the core graph with the European Union graph. The page opens on one line that counts the axioms and the default rules the second graph adds, lacks and holds in a different form, then lists them: the added statements, the ones it does not have, and the changed ones (two relations between the same actions, or two rules for one action whose outcome, territory, basis or explanation differ), every rule with its status, basis and explanation. Swap the two turns the comparison round, every graph is linked to its page, and the same comparison is available as JSON (?format=json) and through the API (GET /dependencygraph/compare).

Create, edit, share, publish#

1. Create. /my/dependency-graphs/new: give it a name of at most 200 characters and decide what it starts from. There are three ways. Starting from a published core graph such as dg_default copies its statements (46 for dg_default), so you only have to change what you disagree with. Upload a Turtle file reads the statements out of a file on your computer (UTF-8, at most one megabyte); a file you downloaded from a graph here can be uploaded again exactly as it is, and you get the same statements back. Starting empty gives you a blank table. If you attach a file and also pick something under Start from, the file is used and the page says so. A file that is not Turtle, is not UTF-8, is too large or holds statements the editor would refuse is reported on the form and nothing is created.
2. Edit. /my/dependency-graphs/{id}/edit is a table of statements: a subject action, one of odrl:includedIn, odrl:implies, owl:sameAs and dalicc:contradicts, and an object action. Both sides are chosen from the DALICC vocabulary by their CURIE. Add and remove rows without JavaScript, paste Turtle into Import from Turtle or a file, attach a Turtle file there instead (the text of the file is put into the box so you can see what was read), or copy a core graph's statements in. Refused: an action the vocabulary does not define, a relation that is not one of the four, an action related to itself, and the same statement twice. Reported but accepted: a circle in odrl:includedIn or odrl:implies, which makes every action in the circle follow from every other one.
3. Save. Every save writes the statements into your own private graph and keeps a revision. Revisions are never overwritten and never deleted.
4. Share. The manage page shares the graph with an account as an editor (may change the statements) or a viewer (may read them), or invites an address that has no account yet. Ownership can be transferred; the previous owner stays an editor.
5. Publish. The statements move to https://dalicc.net/dependencygraph/{id}, the graph becomes unlisted (nobody else's list shows it, and the identifier is the only way to it) and version 1 is stored with its change log. A published graph is never edited: Create new version starts a fresh draft, and publishing that one deprecates its predecessor and points at the successor.

Promotion to a core graph#

An administrator can republish somebody's graph as curated data, which gives it a permanent identifier and puts it in front of everybody. Nothing is deleted and no address stops resolving: the statements are copied into a new core graph, and your graph is marked deprecated with a pointer at its successor. Ask for it through a submission (section 20).

Choosing a graph for a task#

The seven jurisdiction graphs. Beside the curated core graph, DALICC ships one graph per big market: the European Union, the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Japan, India and Brazil. Each one is complete: the core graph's axioms and its adopted rule, plus the default rules proposed for that market, and it adopts nothing of its own. A jurisdiction graph may also leave out an axiom of the core graph or replace one of its rules where the law of that market does not agree with it, always with the legal reason; none of the seven does so today. None of them is the default for any check: choosing one in the License Compatibility Checker, the Composer or the Viewer is a request to see what its rules would do, and the answer says on every finding which side came from the text of a license and which from a rule. The graphs are named plainly ("European Union default rules"), because each graph is published; what is proposed is each rule. Every rule in them is a proposal for the association's legal reviewer, the Status column of the Viewer, the graph page and the editor says so beside every rule, and a finding in the License Compatibility Checker or the Composer that a rule supplied reads "by default rule (proposed)", or "(adopted)" for the core graph's rule. Nothing in them is legal advice. LICENSE_REVIEW.md lists every rule with the statute it rests on.

The three selects offer the same list, in the same order and in three groups: Core graph, Jurisdiction graphs (the core graph plus local default rules), then your graphs and the ones somebody shared with you. An option is named <title> (core, default, version 2), European Union default rules (version 2): the core graph plus 9 default rules (with "removes M axioms" and "replaces K rules" when a graph does), <title> (yours, version 2), <title> (shared with you, version 1) or, for a graph that has not been published yet, <title> (yours, draft). The Viewer's list and the core list of /my/dependency-graphs use the same groups and lines.

A draft can be reasoned with right away. A draft is in every one of those selects for you and for everybody you share it with, and for nobody else. Publishing gives the graph a public address and a version number; it does not change what the tools can do with it. The License Comparator has no selector, because it puts license records side by side and does not reason.

A published core graph is accepted from anybody. A graph belonging to an account is accepted only with that account's session or API token; anybody else gets 403, so an owner can tell a typo from a graph that is not theirs.

Who may do what#

The per-graph roles are the license ones, with one documented addition: a core graph is curated data, so an administrator edits it in place and publishing mints the next version instead of creating a second object. Nobody but an administrator may touch a core graph.

A published graph names its owner by display name and profile address, never by e-mail. What is written to the record of changes is in ADMINISTRATION.md.

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19. Text-to-License#

/text-to-license reads the text of a license and proposes the DALICC model for it: the asset types, the permissions with their duties, the prohibitions and the clause texts. What comes back is a draft with its reasoning attached, and it is yours to correct before anything happens to it. Every statement carries the sentence of the license it was read out of and a confidence, and nothing is published.

The page is available to people with an account, and an installation can open it to everybody. It works only while an administrator has configured an access key for it; without one the page says "The translation assistant is not configured."

The page used to be called the License Translator, and an old /license-translator link or bookmark still works: it redirects here.

Translating a text#

1. Paste the license text, or upload it as a .txt or .md file. The counter under the box says how many characters it is and, for a long text, how many parts it will be read in.
2. Give it a title, or leave the box empty and take the title the assistant reads out of the text.
3. Tick the consent box. The text is sent to an external model provider for processing, so do not submit a text that is not yours to send (see The text you submit below). The line under the box names the provider your text goes to first and the ones it may go to instead when that one is busy; your consent covers whichever of them answers, and the privacy notice lists them all.
4. Press Translate. A short license takes a few seconds; a long one is read part by part and takes about as many times longer.

While it runs#

A license of several parts is read in the background and a page follows it, so you can leave it open and come back. That page tells you four things:

• Where the run is. One line in plain words, "Part 3 of 8 is with the provider" or "The parts are being put together", with a bar and a counter under it so you can see that the page is alive while a part is out.
• How long is left. An estimate from what a part of your text has taken so far. It appears once the first part is back and it gets better with each one.
• What has come back. Each part that is read adds short lines to a list: "Permission: Distribute" and the first words of the sentence it came from. It is a preview. The whole proposal, with the full quotes and the confidences, opens when the run is over.
• What is missing. A part the provider could not answer is named there and marked "will be offered for retry".

Without JavaScript the page still works: it offers a link to open the result, and reloading it says whether the run is over.

The text you submit, and what happens to it#

The consent box says it plainly: "The text you submit is sent to an external model provider for processing. Do not submit confidential texts." Both the page and the API refuse to run without that consent.

DALICC does not keep the text you submit. It records one row per run with your account, how long the text was, how many parts it was read in, what the run cost and what came of it. The proposal quotes the text it was read from, so it is held for a couple of hours, long enough for the page to collect it, and then removed. After that the only place the content survives is the draft you chose to save, which is private to you like any other draft. What the provider keeps is the provider's business and outside DALICC's control. Do not submit anything that is not already public; a license text usually is.

A long license can change provider in the middle of a run, when the first one is out of its allowance. The result page says which provider answered.

Reading the result#

A row with a peach background names a term that is not in the DALICC vocabulary. It was left out of the model on purpose, and it usually means the assistant reached for something that does not exist.

The column Where it comes from says of every statement whether the assistant quoted it or the library added it. The assistant records only what it can quote, and the curated records carry a little more, so that two licenses of one family are modelled the same way. Those statements are marked library convention, the block under the table says which rule added each one and why, and each has a Keep this statement box. Clear the box and the statement is left out of the composer, the draft and the download, so nothing you disagree with travels any further.

If the strip above the table says that some parts could not be read, Try the parts that failed again reads only those and merges what comes back into what you are already looking at. Nothing that worked is translated twice.

What the library already says. Most texts people read here are texts the library already models, so the page looks the curated record up and shows it next to your reading. Where nothing matches, the block says Closest record in the library and how close it is, which is a hint rather than an answer.

The table has three columns: what only your reading says, what both say, and what only the record says. A duty they both state but hang in different places gets a row of its own, because that is the difference a reading gets wrong most often: a text states a duty once, under distribution, and the curated record repeats it on every permission it applies to. Adopt the library model takes the record's set over whole, keeping the quotes your reading found for the statements the two agree on; the box next to a row takes over that one row. Adopting changes only what is on the page, and whatever you adopt is what the three buttons below carry.

Then one of three things:

• Open in composer fills the License Composer in with the proposal, where you can correct it, check it again and publish it as your own license. The whole proposal travels, including the statements the questions cannot express, which the composer lists under Further statements from the reading (section 7);
• Save as draft writes it straight into your private drafts and opens it under My licenses. Nothing is public until you publish it;
• Download JSON gives you the whole proposal, evidence included, to keep or to send through the API.

What it can and cannot do#

• The output is a draft. A machine's reading of the text, wrong often enough that publishing one unreviewed would put a wrong model on a permanent address. Check every statement against the quote next to it.
• A quote is evidence, not proof. It is copied from the text, but whether it supports the statement is a judgement, and that judgement is yours.
• Confidence is self-reported. It ranks statements within one run; it is not a probability.
• Silence is not a prohibition. The assistant still sometimes proposes a prohibition where the text simply grants nothing, and the consistency check does not catch that: only reading does.
• An invented term is dropped, not accepted. A term the vocabulary does not have is kept in the result, left out of the model and reported as a warning. One the assistant keeps reaching for may be a real gap in the vocabulary.
• A long license is read in parts, and a statement that depends on two distant sections may be missed by both. The overlap between parts reduces that, it does not remove it.
• Nothing here is legal advice. The model is a machine-readable summary; the license text is the license.

What it costs you#

The strip above the form says three numbers: how many requests the assistant has left at the provider and when they come back, how many translations you have run today out of your daily allowance, and how many the whole deployment has run. When the provider is out of requests the page says so with a countdown and the button is switched off; nothing is spent finding out.

Your daily allowance is ten translations by default. An administrator can raise or lower it for your account, and the installation as a whole has a daily allowance of its own.

The settings an administrator controls, and what the last runs cost, are in ADMINISTRATION.md. The API is in API.md; how the assistant reads a text is in TRANSLATION.md.

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19a. License-to-Text#

License-to-Text is the other direction of section 19. It takes a DALICC license model and writes the license text for it in plain English: what you may do, what you must do, what you may not do, and the further terms. It is at /license-to-text, in the Tools menu under Text-to-License, and there is a Write this as a license text link on every license page.

The page is available to people with an account, and an installation can open it to everybody. The composer has its own button of the same name and does not come here: it writes the text into the License text section of the form, where you can correct it and keep it with the license (section 7). This page is for a license of the library and for a model you have on disk.

It changes nothing. Nothing is published, nothing is saved, and the license itself is untouched. What you get is prose to read, to check and to keep.

What you give it#

One of three things:

• the identifier or address of a license, curated (Apache-2.0) or unlisted (the 32-character identifier of a license you composed);
• a pasted model, as Turtle or JSON-LD, exactly as the Download buttons on a license page give it to you. This is how a license that never left your machine is read;
• the license you have just composed, by its 32-character identifier once you have published it. While you are still composing, the button in the License text section of the composer writes the text into that page instead.

What you get#

A title, a short preamble, numbered sections in the order permissions, conditions, prohibitions and further terms, and a closing sentence. Every section lists the terms of the model it covers, under the section itself, so you can see what a sentence was written from.

Under the text there is either a line saying that every term of the model is covered, or a Not covered note naming the terms the text missed. The note matters: a license text that reads smoothly and leaves out a duty is worse than one that says it awkwardly, and the note is the only way to tell the two apart at a glance.

The text can be saved as a .txt or a .md file. The page shows it once and keeps nothing.

Who wrote the text#

Two writers produce the same structure, and the page says which one answered.

• The assistant. The model is sent to an external provider, which writes the prose. This is the readable one. The result page names the provider that answered.
• DALICC itself. A deterministic writer builds the text from the definitions in the DALICC vocabulary. It is plainer, and it always covers the model in full. It answers whenever the assistant is not configured on the deployment, your allowance for the day is used up, or the provider does not answer, so the feature always gives you a text.

The deterministic text alone is also a plain link, with no account and no allowance: https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/license/Apache-2.0?format=text, which is what Download > Text on a license page gives you. Where the license carries a license text of its own, that link gives you that text instead, because it is the license rather than a reading of it.

Names, and what is sent#

The model goes to the same providers as Text-to-License, in the same order, and the line under the form names them. A curated record carries no personal data; a license you composed carries the name you entered, so the form offers Send the model without names, which turns the creator, the licensor and the publisher into "the licensor" before anything leaves DALICC. It is ticked by default for a composed license and unticked for a library record, where the publisher is a fact about the license. The composer's own button always leaves the names out. See the privacy notice.

The allowance#

License-to-Text has a daily allowance of its own: writing a license text never takes a translation away, and running a translation never takes a license text away. Unless an administrator sets a figure for it, you may write as many license texts a day as you may run translations, and the strip above the form says what is left before you press the button (section 19). The deterministic writer costs nothing and is never counted.

An administrator may switch License-to-Text off for the whole installation, or limit how many license texts an account may write in a day. Switched off, the page, the composer's button and the API say so; the plain text link above keeps working, because it asks no provider.

The text is generated from the machine-readable model and is not legal advice. Only the license itself is binding.

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20. Submissions, correction requests and the inbox#

The DALICC library is two different things. One half is yours: the licenses you compose and the dependency graphs you write, private until you publish them, unlisted afterwards. The other half is curated: the records everybody searches and the graph the compatibility checker reasons with. Nobody owns the curated half, which is why changing it is a request rather than an edit.

Offer something of yours for the curated library#

1. Publish it first. A draft is private, so a curator could not read it.
2. Open its manage page (/my/licenses/{id} or /my/dependency-graphs/{id}) and choose Submit for review as a core license (or Submit for review as a core graph).
3. Say in a few sentences why it belongs there: who uses it, where the legal text is, what makes it worth curating. You may propose the identifier it should get; the curators assign the final one.

What happens next is on /my/submissions: the status, the conversation, and a Withdraw the submission button while nobody has decided. When a curator asks for changes, change your own copy (publishing a new version of it is the normal way) and press Submit it again.

Nothing is moved, renamed or deleted when a submission is published. A new curated record is created that says the same thing, names your license as its source and you as its creator, and starts at version 1. Your own license keeps its address, its owner and its history.

Report that a curated record is wrong#

Anybody with an account can. On a curated license page, or on /dependency-graph, choose Request a correction. A visitor without an account gets Report an issue in the same place, an e-mail link.

The form is structured on purpose. Each row names

• which field is wrong (the list under the form shows what the record says today, and picking a field fills the next box in for you),
• what it says now,
• what it should say,
• why: the clause or the section of the license text that says so.

At least one row is needed; the free-text box is for everything a row cannot hold. Your requests are on /my/requests, with the conversation and a Withdraw the request button while nobody has decided.

A request is resolved automatically: when a curator publishes the corrected version naming your request, the status changes and the new version is linked in the conversation. Nothing has to be closed by hand.

The inbox#

/inbox is one page for everything DALICC has to tell you and everything you want to say back:

• a notification strip at the top, newest first, with a link to what it is about;
• the conversations you take part in, with the number of messages you have not read;
• a switch for the notification e-mails (see below).

Opening a conversation marks it read, and the badge in the account menu ("Inbox (3)") goes down. Messages are written in markdown: a list, a link, a code block. HTML is removed rather than shown. Messages DALICC writes itself, such as "Ada Admin approved this submission", are marked as system messages and cannot be written by anybody.

You are in a conversation when it is about something of yours (a submission, a request, a license or a graph you own or were given access to), or when somebody started one with you. Nobody else can open it, administrator or not, except for the two queue kinds (submissions and correction requests), which every administrator reads because that is what the queue is.

No e-mail addresses are shown. Everybody is named by their display name, whoever is reading. Addresses stay in the administration pages.

To write to the DALICC team about something that is not a submission or a correction, use Contact the administrators on /inbox. An administrator writing to one account uses Message on /admin/users/{id}.

Notification e-mails#

Every notification always appears in your inbox. When the installation has a mail server, which an operator sets up (OPERATIONS.md), the notification is mailed to you as well. The subject is [DALICC] <kind>: <subject>, and the mail carries a one-line summary, the message it is about and a link back. You can switch those mails off on /inbox or /account/notifications; the default is on. When there is no mail server the page says so and nothing is sent.

A mail server that is down never fails what you were doing: the notification is in your inbox either way, and the inbox shows which ones went out by e-mail.

What the curators do with it#

You see every step in your own conversation, so there is no queue to watch and nothing to chase. The pages the curators work in are in ADMINISTRATION.md.

Who may do what#

Every status change is recorded four times over: on the submission or the request itself (who decided, when and with which note), as a message in the conversation, as a notification for the people it concerns, and in the record of changes an administrator can read. Nothing is deleted; a withdrawal is a status, not an erasure.

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21. API limits and usage#

Everything below is about requests made with a personal API token. Pages you open in a browser are not affected: they are protected by the per-IP limits described in API.md.

How much one account may ask for#

Four windows apply at the same time, and a request has to fit in all of them:

An administrator can raise or lower all four for one account, and the installation has defaults of its own.

They are counted per account, not per token. A second token does not give you a second allowance, and revoking one token does not free anything for the others. That is deliberate: a token is a credential, not a quota.

An expensive call counts as more than one request, because that is what it costs DALICC: a compatibility check as five, a consistency check as three, a translation as ten, and everything else as one (API.md).

On top of the per-account windows there is a ceiling across all token traffic together, 600 requests a minute by default. Reaching it answers 429 with a message that says the service is busy rather than that you are over your own limit.

What you see#

/account/tokens shows "Your API limits" with a row per window: how much you have used, what the limit is, what is left, and how many seconds until the window restarts. The token table on the same page shows when each token was last used, which is how you find the one a forgotten script is still running.

Every answer to a token request carries X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset for the window closest to refusing your next call. Going over a limit is 429 with Retry-After and a body naming the window. The exact shapes are in API.md.

If your allowance is too small#

Ask an administrator. They can see what your account has been calling, and they can raise the four numbers for your account alone, without a restart and without changing anybody else's allowance. How they do it is in ADMINISTRATION.md. Lowering what everybody may ask for is a change to the installation itself and belongs to an operator (DEPLOYMENT.md).

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22. Your data#

What DALICC processes about you, why, how long it keeps it and who else sees it is on one page: dalicc.net/privacy, linked from the footer of every page and from every form that collects something. It is written per workflow, with the retention periods the service really uses, so you can look up one thing without reading the rest.

When the notice changes. The end of the page prints its version and the date it was last changed, and the version that was on screen when you accepted your invitation is recorded with your account, so you can find out what you agreed to. When something changes that you would want to know about, the next page you open while signed in carries a banner that says so, with the list of changes folded under What changed (open it to read them), a link to the page and an I have read it button that records that you saw it. The banner blocks nothing and asks for no consent: where consent is needed it is asked for on the form that collects the data.

Two of your rights need no message to anybody.

A copy of what your account holds. /account/export downloads one JSON file with your profile, your licenses and dependency graphs with the RDF of each and every saved version of them, your submissions and correction requests, the conversations you take part in with the messages everybody wrote in them, the notes written for you, the invitations you received and sent, your runs of the two assistants, your recent API requests and the limits set on your account, the publisher name reserved for you, and the audit entries about your account and the things it owns. No password hash, no token value and no one-time link is in it: those are keys, not information about you.

Deleting your account. /account/delete lists what is deleted and what stays, then asks for your password and a tick. An account that signs in through your organisation has no password, so the page says "Your account signs in through your organisation, so no password is asked for." and asks for the tick and a recent sign-in instead: if you signed in more than 15 minutes ago, sign in again through your organisation first. It replaces your name and your e-mail address with placeholders, clears your password, revokes your tokens, ends every session, removes your notification settings and every note written for you, deletes your unpublished licenses and dependency graphs with all their saved versions, deletes the invitations that brought you here and the ones you sent, and takes your account id off the runs of the two assistants. It cannot be undone, and the placeholder address can neither sign in nor be invited back.

What deletion does not change is what other people rely on. A published license stays public, keeps its address and keeps the creator name on it: a license has to say who granted it, and a grant by nobody is not a grant. Your submissions, correction requests and messages stay as the record of the review, because other people took part in it. Every page that shows your name reads it from your account, so it becomes the placeholder there; a system line written before September 2026 may still spell your name out, because those lines were stored with the name in them, and the association will redact one on request.

Withdrawing a license first. Deleting the account does not withdraw anything. If you no longer stand behind the terms of a license you published, mark it withdrawn: its address keeps working, its terms stay readable for the people who already rely on them, and its page says from which date it is withdrawn. Each license has the action on its own page, and the delete page offers it for all of them before you confirm. If you want the name taken off a withdrawn license as well, write to the addresses on the privacy notice and say which one; the association decides such a request.

Changing your name. A new name appears everywhere the site draws it, from then on, but a license you have already published keeps the name it was published with, the way a signature does. If one is wrong, write to us and it is corrected as a new version.

If you cannot sign in any more, write to the addresses on the contact page and an administrator does the same thing from your account page. Anything else, a correction or an objection, is a message to the same addresses: it needs a person to read it.

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Reference. The addresses of the pages this manual talks about.

23. Where to find things#

Pages anybody may open

Pages that need an account

The pages under /admin are listed in ADMINISTRATION.md. The same objects over the API are in API.md, and the Python client that wraps them is in SDK.md.

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24. Glossary#

The words the site uses in a sense of its own, in alphabetical order. The same entries are on one page of their own at /documentation/glossary, and the explanations on the record pages and the graph pages link to them.

Adopted#

The status of a default rule the library applies as its own convention. One rule is adopted: in the core graph, a license that says nothing about endorsement grants no right to use the licensor's name or marks to endorse a product. A finding that rests on it reads by default rule (adopted). See proposed.

Conflict#

In a compatibility check, two statements that no combined work can meet together: one license requires what another prohibits, two duties cannot both be met, or two licenses each require the whole work to stay under themselves and no "or later" option or compatibility clause leads from one to the other (GPL-2.0-only and GPL-3.0-only). One conflict makes the verdict Cannot be combined. Compare restriction.

Default rule#

A statement of a dependency graph about an act a license says nothing about: which act, what applies to it (not granted, granted, required, or a term the law does not let a license set aside), in which territory, and the statute or principle it rests on. A default rule is not part of any record. A check supplies it only for a license that is silent, and every finding says which side came from the text and which from a rule. Each rule is either adopted or proposed. None of it is legal advice.

Dependency graph#

What the checks reason with: the statements about how the actions relate to each other (Grant use is the same act as Sublicense, Distribute is included in Use) and the default rules. The core graph is the one a check uses when you choose nothing; seven jurisdiction graphs add the rules proposed for one market each. Section 18 has the details.

Edition#

The same license text reissued by another body in the same legal system, for example the Open Supreme Court Licence as an edition of the UK Open Government Licence. The record page says Edition of and names the license it reissues, which lists the edition under Jurisdiction ports and editions.

Exception#

A variant that reads a license together with an SPDX exception, which lifts one of its conditions. GPL-2.0-only-with-Classpath-exception-2.0 is GPL-2.0-only with the Classpath exception, which lets independent modules linked with the covered code be distributed under terms of their own.

License#

The legal text a licensor publishes: the words that grant the rights and set the conditions. DALICC does not hold licenses as texts; it holds records of them, and links each record to its text. When the home page counts licenses, it counts the distinct legal texts the library models.

License owner#

The account that holds a license composed on DALICC. It publishes the license, shares it, starts new versions and can withdraw it. DALICC does not check that this account holds the rights it licenses, and it does not review the terms. A curated record has no License owner; the association maintains it.

Port#

Short for jurisdiction port: a license adapted to the law of one country, such as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Austria. A port has a record of its own, and the library lists it folded under the license it comes from. DALICC groups the Creative Commons ports of versions 2.0 to 3.0 under the 4.0 International license of the same elements, although their texts differ from it.

Proposed#

The status of every default rule but one: a reading of the law put forward for the association's legal reviewer, a role that is not yet filled. The 27 rules of the seven jurisdiction graphs are proposed. A proposed rule applies only when you choose its graph, and a finding that rests on one reads by default rule (proposed). In a review record, a finding marked proposed suggests a change to the record that nobody has decided yet.

Record#

DALICC's machine-readable model of one license: what it permits, prohibits and requires, the clauses it quotes, and where the legal text is. Every record has its own identifier and permanent address, https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/<id>. One license can have several records, one for itself and one for each port, edition or variant. The record is published under CC BY 4.0; the license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Restriction#

In a compatibility check, one license permits an act that another prohibits. The works can still be combined, but the combined work may not do that act. The MIT License permits changing the license and GPL-3.0 prohibits it, so MIT code can go into a GPL-3.0 work and the result stays under GPL-3.0. A license that names another as compatible gives the restriction "The combined work has to be released under" that license. Restrictions alone make the verdict Can be combined with restrictions. Compare conflict.

Rider#

A variant that adds a condition to a license. Apache-2.0-with-Commons-Clause is the Apache License 2.0 with the Commons Clause, which withholds the right to sell the software.

Statement origin#

Where a permission, a prohibition or a duty comes from. The record page marks each one:

• from the text: the library's reading of a sentence of the license. Where the record keeps that sentence, the "?" beside the statement quotes it.
• by library convention: the text is not explicit, and the library states it for every license of the kind. The "?" names the convention, for example a family rule.
• by default rule: not a statement of the license at all, but one a default rule of the dependency graph supplies because the license is silent, marked (proposed) or (adopted).

Superseded#

A version that a newer version replaces. The page of the old version says A newer version exists and links the new one. Its address keeps working, and rights already granted under it are not affected by the new version. Compare withdrawn.

Variant#

A record that models the legal text of another record with one thing changed. There are three kinds: the or-later form of a license (GPL-2.0-or-later beside GPL-2.0-only), an exception and a rider. Unlike a port, a variant is a license of its own: listed, searched and counted like any other, and its page names the record it varies.

Withdrawn#

A license its publisher no longer offers for new uses. The License owner or an administrator sets it with Withdraw this license on the manage page. The page says Withdrawn by its publisher and gives the date. Nothing is deleted: the terms stay readable, and whether rights already granted continue is decided by the license's own terms. Compare superseded.