ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)

Also known as ODC PDDL, ODC PDDL 1.0, PDDL 1.0.

Commercial use: allowed
Share alike: not required
Attribution: not required

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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/OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence

Permissions

Change license by library convention
Charge distribution fee from the text
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Derive from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Extract or reuse a substantial part of a database from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

This license states no prohibitions.

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.

Promote by default rule (adopted)

This license says nothing about Promote, and the graph applies this reading in all jurisdictions it covers: it is not permitted unless the license permits it.

A licence that says nothing about endorsement is read as not allowing it: the licence gives the licensee no right to use the licensor's name or marks in a way that states or implies that the licensor endorses the licensee or its product, while stating truthfully that a work is based on or uses the licensed work is a different act that this rule does not decide. A copyright licence grants rights in the work, and the right to use a name or a trademark is a separate right under trademark law and the protection of names, which a silent copyright licence does not pass on. Combining a licence that is silent about endorsement with one that permits it shows a conflict marked as coming from this rule.

Basis Trademark and name rights are separate from copyright: Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 article 9 lets the proprietor of an EU trade mark prevent all third parties not having his consent from using the sign in the course of trade, and Directive (EU) 2015/2436 article 10, 15 U.S.C. 1114 and 1125(a), section 12 BGB and section 43 ABGB protect marks and names in the same way. The library's evidence is Creative Commons 4.0 section 2(b)(2): Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License. A copyright licence that is silent grants no right to use the licensor's name or marks to suggest endorsement (Worldwide)

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

The Work is provided by the Rightsholder “as is” and without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied, whether of title, of accuracy or completeness, of the presence of absence of errors, of fitness for purpose, or otherwise. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to You.

Limitation of liability

Subject to any liability that may not be excluded or limited by law, the Rightsholder is not liable for, and expressly excludes, all liability for loss or damage however and whenever caused to anyone by any use under this Document, whether by You or by anyone else, and whether caused by any fault on the part of the Rightsholder or not. This exclusion of liability includes, but is not limited to, any special, incidental, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages. This exclusion applies even if the Rightsholder has been advised of the possibility of such damages. If liability may not be excluded by law, it is limited to actual and direct financial loss to the extent it is caused by proved negligence on the part of the Rightsholder.

Additional clauses

Licence of Copyright and Database Rights when Sections 3.1 and 3.2 inapplicable. If the dedication and waiver in Sections 3.1 and 3.2 does not apply in the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4, the Rightsholder and You agree as follows: The Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, licence to Use the Work for the duration of any applicable Copyright and Database Rights. These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour.

Info

Target asset types: Dataset
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: https://opendefinition.org/licenses/odc-pddl/
Legal code: https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher: Open Data Commons
SPDX identifier: PDDL-1.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence

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/OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence",
  "license-title": "ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)",
  "spdx-id": "PDDL-1.0",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle

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

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

RDF, JSON-LD

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

This license carries no attribution duty, so no credit line is offered here.

Badge

Markdown

[![License: ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence/badge.svg" alt="License: ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)"></a>

Review

Status: Reviewed against the license text
Last checked: 2026-09-15
Reviewer: Giray Havur
Verdict: corrected during the review
Record changed since this review: yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings: 14 recorded, 5 applied to the record, 0 proposed

PDDL is the Open Data Commons counterpart of CC0: a dedication of a database to the public domain with a licence fallback for jurisdictions where the dedication does not work. The record models it correctly, with every act permitted, no duty anywhere and only the trademark prohibition. Applied: the SPDX identifier and the fallback licence of Section 3.3, quoted into dalicc:additionalClauses.

14 findings

minor Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

The record carried no SPDX identifier. Its cc:legalcode, https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/, is the seeAlso URL of the SPDX entry PDDL-1.0, and the fetched document is headed "Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0". The proposal file rated this medium; the version in the document confirms it. Added.
info Rubric 2 odrl:target none

dcmitype:Dataset only, which matches a document whose subject is a database and whose Section 2 covers copyright and database rights in the work.
info Rubric 3 odrl:permission none

Every act is permitted, which follows Section 3.1: "The Rightsholder by using this Document, dedicates the Work to the public domain for the benefit of the public and relinquishes all rights in Copyright and Database Rights over the Work." dalicc:ChangeLicense among the permissions is right for a dedication.
info Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition none

dalicc:promote is the only prohibition and it is supported by Section 4.3: "This Document does not grant You a licence for any trade marks that the Rightsholder may own or that the Rightsholder may use to cover the Work." Section 4.2 does the same for patents, which the vocabulary cannot express as a reservation.
info Rubric 5 odrl:duty none

No duty, which is correct: PDDL imposes no attribution or notice requirement. Section 4.1 says the work is made available "without any other contractual obligations, either express or implied" and that a community norms statement is not a contract. The family-rule baseline lists this record among the four where no attribution duty is expected.
minor Rubric 6 dalicc:additionalClauses applied

Section 3.3, the licence that applies where the dedication and the waiver are ineffective, was missing. It is the operative clause in those jurisdictions and it repeats that the rights "explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour". Quoted verbatim into dalicc:additionalClauses, in the same way as the fallback clause of CC0.
info Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer none

dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer is Section 5.1 and dalicc:LiabilityLimitation is Sections 5.2 and 5.3, both quoted verbatim. The warranty value begins with a stray leading blank, which is cosmetic and was left alone. Section 3.4, moral rights, and Section 6.4, the jurisdiction rule that decides which of 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 applies, are not carried.
info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:perpetual are supported: the dedication is unlimited in time and territory, and Section 3.3(a) grants the fallback licence "for the duration of any applicable Copyright and Database Rights".
gap Rubric 8 record none

As with CC0, nothing in the model says that this is a dedication and not a licence, and the reservation of patent and trade mark rights in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 can only be approximated by the dalicc:promote prohibition. Proposed terms: dalicc:publicDomainDedication and dalicc:patentRightsReserved.
info Rubric 9 record none

The consistency check reports no conflict, before and after the corrections.
info Rubric 10 record none

The record shares its deontic signature with Cc010Universal, which the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) flags as a cross-family pair. That is correct rather than a defect: both documents dedicate the work and both fall back to a permissive licence. The separation into two records is justified by provenance and by the subject matter, a database against any work. Inside the Open Data Commons family this record is the permissive end, ODC-By the attribution end and ODbL the share-alike end, and all three now carry the same Section 3.1 commercial-use grant in their model.
minor Rubric 10 record applied

Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9 and 10: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. Library convention 14: the warranty literal carried a padding space inside its quotation marks.
major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

Section 3.3(a), the licence that applies where the dedication and waiver of Sections 3.1 and 3.2 do not, reads: "The Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, licence to Use the Work for the duration of any applicable Copyright and Database Rights." The licence defines Database Rights as the sui generis database right, so the permission is text-supported; without it, the proposed EU and UK default rule reads the licence as not granting the right it exists to grant. dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights is permitted, with no duty, as the dedication asks for nothing.
major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

dalicc:promote was prohibited with no sentence of the text quoted for it. The only sentence near the subject, "This Document does not cover any trade marks associated with the Database." (Section 2.2(c)), leaves trademarks outside the dedication and says nothing about endorsement, which is silence; since 2026-09-23 what a silent licence grants about endorsement is the adopted default rule of the core dependency graph, not a statement of the record (see section 13 of docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md). Removed, as on the ODbL record.

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.

Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

The content review of 2026-09-15 added 1 clause text and 1 identification detail and recorded the review state. Later changes brought it in line with its family and its text in the verification of 2026-09-15, recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on, recorded what the text says about the database right, named the license the record itself is published under and left endorsement to the default rule of the core dependency graph.

View version 2 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML
9 changes
- added dalicc:additionalClauses "Licence of Copyright and Database Rights when Sections 3.1 and 3.2 inapplicable. If the dedication and waiver in Sections 3.1 and 3.2 does not apply in the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4, the Rightsholder and You agree as follows: The Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, licence to Use the Work for the duration of any applicable Copyright and Database Rights. These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour."
  
  Review finding Section 3.3, the licence that applies where the dedication and the waiver are ineffective, was missing. It is the operative clause in those jurisdictions and it repeats that the rights "explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour". Quoted verbatim into dalicc:additionalClauses, in the same way as the fallback clause of CC0.
- added dalicc:reviewStatus dalicc:Reviewed
  
  Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.
- added dalicc:reviewedOn "2026-09-15"^^xsd:date
  
  Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.
- added spdx:licenseId "PDDL-1.0"
  
  Review finding The record carried no SPDX identifier. Its cc:legalcode, https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/, is the seeAlso URL of the SPDX entry PDDL-1.0, and the fetched document is headed "Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0". The proposal file rated this medium; the version in the document confirms it. Added.
- changed dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "The Work is provided by the Rightsholder “as is” and without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied, whether of title, of accuracy or completeness, of the presence of absence of errors, of fitness for purpose, or otherwise. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to You."
  
  was dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer " The Work is provided by the Rightsholder “as is” and without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied, whether of title, of accuracy or completeness, of the presence of absence of errors, of fitness for purpose, or otherwise. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to You."
  
  Manual edit Library convention 14: the warranty literal carried a padding space inside its quotation marks.
- changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense
  
  was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense
  
  Manual edit The statement is marked as a library convention, family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing: the text does not state it in as many words.
- added permission dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights
  
  Manual edit Section 3.3(a), the licence that applies where the dedication and waiver of Sections 3.1 and 3.2 do not, grants the rights "for the duration of any applicable copyright and Database Rights", and the licence defines Database Rights as the sui generis right of the Database Directive, so the permission is text-supported.
- 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.
- removed prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  Manual edit No sentence was quoted for the prohibition. The text only says "This Document does not cover any trade marks associated with the Database." (Section 2.2(c)), which is silence about endorsement, and the default rule of the core dependency graph covers silence.
Version 1

The version this model had before the content review of 2026-09-15.

View version 1 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.