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2026

Academic Free License v2.0

Also known as AFL 2.0, AFL-2.0, Academic Free License v2.0.

Commercial use
allowed
Share alike
not required
Attribution
required (keep the copyright and license notices)
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Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-2.0

Permissions

  • Charge distribution fee from the text Charging a fee for the act of providing a copy of the work to someone else.
  • Charge license fee from the text Charging a fee for granting someone a license to the work.
  • Commercial use from the text Using the work to generate income, directly or indirectly, for example by selling it or by using it in advertising.
  • Derivative works from the text Distributing an adaptation of the work and making it available to the public.
  • Derive from the text Creating a new work from the work, such as a translation, adaptation or arrangement of it or of a part of it.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Modification notice from the text Marking a changed work as changed, saying how it differs from the original and keeping earlier notices of change.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Display from the text Showing the work to the public without making a copy the viewer keeps.
  • Distribute from the text Providing copies of the work to the public or to anyone else.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
    • Recipient assent from the text Making a reasonable effort to obtain the express assent of a recipient to the terms of the license before the work reaches them, rather than relying on the notice alone.
    • Source code from the text Providing access to the source code of the work with every copy distributed.
  • Modified works from the text Distributing a modified version of the work that does not amount to a new, derivative work.
  • Modify from the text Altering the work, for example by updating it, without creating a new work; an alteration that creates a new work is Derive.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Modification notice from the text Marking a changed work as changed, saying how it differs from the original and keeping earlier notices of change.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Patent grant from the text Granting a license under the patent claims that a contributor holds and that the contribution necessarily infringes.
  • Present from the text Performing the work in public, including by broadcast or other communication to the public.
  • Reproduce from the text Making copies of the work in any form.
  • Sublicense from the text The text says: "Licensor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license to do the following: a) to reproduce the Original Work in copies;" Granting a third party rights in the work under a license of the licensee's own, rather than passing on the original license.

Prohibitions

  • Promote from the text Not permitted: Promote. The text says: "Neither the names of Licensor, nor the names of any contributors to the Original Work, nor any of their trademarks or service marks, may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work without express prior written permission of the Licensor." Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.

License-wide duties

This license states no duties that apply to the work as a whole.

What applies by default

The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.

No default rule of that graph reaches this license: it speaks about every act the rules are about.

Further terms

These are the things the license says about itself beyond the acts it permits, forbids and requires: when it ends, how long there is to put a breach right, which law governs it, and so on. A term that comes from the DALICC vocabulary links to its definition.

Patent license ends if you sue
Yes. Not a ban on suing: a patent claim over the work ends the patent license, or the whole license, as the text provides.
Terminates on breach
Yes

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

Licensor warrants that the copyright in and to the Original Work and the patent rights granted herein by Licensor are owned by the Licensor or are sublicensed to You under the terms of this License with the permission of the contributor(s) of those copyrights and patent rights. Except as expressly stated in the immediately proceeding sentence, the Original Work is provided under this License on an "AS IS" BASIS and WITHOUT WARRANTY, either express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL WORK IS WITH YOU. This DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY constitutes an essential part of this License. No license to Original Work is granted hereunder except under this disclaimer.

Limitation of liability

Under no circumstances and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, shall the Licensor be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or the use of the Original Work including, without limitation, damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses. This limitation of liability shall not apply to liability for death or personal injury resulting from Licensor's negligence to the extent applicable law prohibits such limitation. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so this exclusion and limitation may not apply to You.

Additional clauses

3) Grant of Source Code License. The term "Source Code" means the preferred form of the Original Work for making modifications to it and all available documentation describing how to modify the Original Work. Licensor hereby agrees to provide a machine-readable copy of the Source Code of the Original Work along with each copy of the Original Work that Licensor distributes. Licensor reserves the right to satisfy this obligation by placing a machine-readable copy of the Source Code in an information repository reasonably calculated to permit inexpensive and convenient access by You for as long as Licensor continues to distribute the Original Work, and by publishing the address of that information repository in a notice immediately following the copyright notice that applies to the Original Work. 4) Exclusions From License Grant. Neither the names of Licensor, nor the names of any contributors to the Original Work, nor any of their trademarks or service marks, may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work without express prior written permission of the Licensor. Nothing in this License shall be deemed to grant any rights to trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets or any other intellectual property of Licensor except as expressly stated herein. No patent license is granted to make, use, sell or offer to sell embodiments of any patent claims other than the licensed claims defined in Section 2. No right is granted to the trademarks of Licensor even if such marks are included in the Original Work. Nothing in this License shall be interpreted to prohibit Licensor from licensing under different terms from this License any Original Work that Licensor otherwise would have a right to license. 9) Acceptance and Termination. If You distribute copies of the Original Work or a Derivative Work, You must make a reasonable effort under the circumstances to obtain the express assent of recipients to the terms of this License. Nothing else but this License (or another written agreement between Licensor and You) grants You permission to create Derivative Works based upon the Original Work or to exercise any of the rights granted in Section 1 herein, and any attempt to do so except under the terms of this License (or another written agreement between Licensor and You) is expressly prohibited by U.S. copyright law, the equivalent laws of other countries, and by international treaty. Therefore, by exercising any of the rights granted to You in Section 1 herein, You indicate Your acceptance of this License and all of its terms and conditions. 10) Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License as of the date You commence an action, including a cross-claim or counterclaim, for patent infringement (i) against Licensor with respect to a patent applicable to software or (ii) against any entity with respect to a patent applicable to the Original Work (but excluding combinations of the Original Work with other software or hardware). 11) Jurisdiction, Venue and Governing Law. Any action or suit relating to this License may be brought only in the courts of a jurisdiction wherein the Licensor resides or in which Licensor conducts its primary business, and under the laws of that jurisdiction excluding its conflict-of-law provisions. The application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded. Any use of the Original Work outside the scope of this License or after its termination shall be subject to the requirements and penalties of the U.S. Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., the equivalent laws of other countries, and international treaty. This section shall survive the termination of this License. 15) Right to Use. You may use the Original Work in all ways not otherwise restricted or conditioned by this License or by law, and Licensor promises not to interfere with or be responsible for such uses by You. This license is Copyright (C) 2003 Lawrence E. Rosen. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this license without modification. This license may not be modified without the express written permission of its copyright owner.

Info

Target asset types
Software
Region / jurisdiction
Worldwide
Validity
Perpetual
Source
https://spdx.org/licenses/AFL-2.0.html
Legal code
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20060924134533/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/afl-2.0.txt
This description is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher
Lawrence Rosen
Attribution name
Lawrence E. Rosen
SPDX identifier
AFL-2.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier
AFL-2.0

This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Use this license

Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.

JSON sidecar 

{
  "license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-2.0",
  "license-title": "Academic Free License v2.0",
  "spdx-id": "AFL-2.0",
  "attribution": "Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holder]",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle 

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-2.0> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-2.0"
  }
}

HTML attribution 

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-2.0" rel="license">Academic Free License v2.0</a>.</p>

This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.

Badge DALICC badge for Academic Free License v2.0

Markdown 

[![License: Academic Free License v2.0](https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-2.0/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-2.0)

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-2.0"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-2.0/badge.svg" alt="License: Academic Free License v2.0"></a>

Review

Written from the license text by
Giray Havur
Written on
2026-09-15
Second review
not yet done
Record changed since this review
yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings
9 recorded, 6 applied to the record, 0 proposed

The Academic Free License rewritten as fifteen numbered sections, the form AFL-3.0 still has. The grant is permissive and sublicenseable, with an express patent licence, an attribution condition on derivative works, a patent retaliation clause and a forum clause. The record follows AFL-3.0. Version 2.0 is the first AFL that is sublicenseable and the first with numbered sections. Nothing here is legal advice.

9 findings

  • info Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

    dcmitype:Software alone, the type 32 of the library's software records carry, among them MIT, BSD-3-Clause, GPL-3.0-only and the sibling OSL-3.0. These texts license an "original work of authorship", which would also fit dalicc:CreativeWork, the type the AFL-3.0 record carries beside Software and Dataset; the review group keeps the narrower reading its review plan prescribes, so that all nine records of the family answer alike and the association can widen them in one pass.

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    Section 1 grants a "world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license" to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute to the public, perform publicly and display publicly, so dalicc:sublicense is a permission; section 2 grants a patent licence "to make, use, sell and offer for sale the Original Work and Derivative Works", so dalicc:patentGrant is a permission and dalicc:chargeLicenseFee follows the right to sell.

  • major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

    Section 4 bars the use of the names and marks of the Licensor and of any contributor "to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work", which is dalicc:promote, and states that no right is granted to the trademarks of Licensor. Section 10 ends the licence on a patent action, which is dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination.

  • major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

    Section 6, Attribution Rights, requires the notices of the Original Work to be retained in the Source Code of any Derivative Work and a prominent Attribution Notice to say that You modified it, so cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:modificationNotice hang on odrl:modify and odrl:derive. cc:SourceCode hangs on odrl:distribute, following AFL-3.0; section 3 is drafted as an undertaking of the Licensor.

  • minor Rubric 6 dalicc:additionalClauses applied

    Sections 7 and 8 are quoted into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and dalicc:LiabilityLimitation. dalicc:additionalClauses carries sections 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 15 and the notice that the licence text may not be modified.

  • info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction applied

    Section 11 does not name a legal system: it points at "the courts of a jurisdiction wherein the Licensor resides or in which Licensor conducts its primary business". cc:jurisdiction therefore stays dalicc:worldwide and the clause is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, the choice OLFL-1.3 and OSC-1.0 already use for a governing-law clause.

  • gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

    Two clauses have no term. Section 9 requires a distributor to make a reasonable effort to obtain the express assent of recipients; proposed term dalicc:recipientAssent. The automatic termination of the licence has no property; proposed term dalicc:terminatesOnBreach. Both are quoted instead.

  • info Rubric 9 record none

    The consistency check of app.services.composer with the axioms of dg_default returned an empty list for this record.

  • info Rubric 10 family none

    AFL-2.0 and AFL-2.1 carry the same model. The only operative difference is section 10: version 2.0 ends the licence on an action "(i) against Licensor with respect to a patent applicable to software or (ii) against any entity with respect to a patent applicable to the Original Work", version 2.1 narrows it to an action "against Licensor or any licensee alleging that the Original Work infringes a patent". Both clauses are quoted in their own records.

Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.

History

This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.

  1. Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

    The changes since version 1 recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on and named the license the record itself is published under.

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    3 changes

    • changed permission dalicc:sublicense

      was permission dalicc:sublicense

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "Licensor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license to do the following: a) to reproduce the Original Work in copies;"

    • changed prohibition dalicc:promote

      was prohibition dalicc:promote

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "Neither the names of Licensor, nor the names of any contributors to the Original Work, nor any of their trademarks or service marks, may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work without express prior written permission of the Licensor."

    • added dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>

      Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.

  2. Version 1

    Created from the license text on 2026-09-15 (Academic Free and Open Software).

    View JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.