Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0

Also known as ODC Attribution License, ODC By, ODC-By.

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/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10

Permissions

Change license by library convention
Duties
- Use a compliant license by library convention
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Derive from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Extract or reuse a substantial part of a database from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

Sublicense from the text

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 Database is licensed by the Licensor "as is" and without any warranty of any kind, either express, implied, or arising by statute, custom, course of dealing, or trade usage. Licensor specifically disclaims any and all implied warranties or conditions of title, non-infringement, accuracy or completeness, the presence or absence of errors, fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, 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 Licensor is not liable for, and expressly excludes, all liability for loss or damage however and whenever caused to anyone by any use under this License, whether by You or by anyone else, and whether caused by any fault on the part of the Licensor or not. This exclusion of liability includes, but is not limited to, any special, incidental, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages such as loss of revenue, data, anticipated profits, and lost business. This exclusion applies even if the Licensor 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 Licensor.

Info

Target asset types: Dataset
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: https://opendefinition.org/licenses/odc-by/
Legal code: https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher: Open Data Commons
Attribution name: Open Data Commons
SPDX identifier: ODC-By-1.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10

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/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10",
  "license-title": "Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0",
  "spdx-id": "ODC-By-1.0",
  "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/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10> .

RDF, JSON-LD

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10"
  }
}

HTML attribution

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10" rel="license">Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0</a>.</p>

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

Badge

Markdown

[![License: Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0](https://dalicc.net/license-library/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10/badge.svg" alt="License: Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0"></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: 16 recorded, 5 applied to the record, 0 proposed, 1 settled in a later version

The record models the attribution-only database licence of Open Data Commons. The two clause fields were wrong: dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer held the website disclaimer of opendatacommons.org instead of Section 7.1 of the licence, and the liability limitation of Section 8 was missing altogether. Both were corrected, and the SPDX identifier was added. The open question for the association is the licence-wide cc:ShareAlike duty: this licence has no share-alike clause, but Section 4.2(a) does require conveying under the terms of this licence.

15 findings

minor Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

The record carried no SPDX identifier although its title is word for word the SPDX name of ODC-By-1.0 and its cc:legalcode is the SPDX seeAlso URL. Added.
info Rubric 1 dct:source none

cc:legalcode is https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/ and dct:source is the opendefinition.org page for ODC-By. The two differ, which the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) lists; here it is deliberate, the licence text plus a third-party description, not an error.
info Rubric 2 odrl:target none

dcmitype:Dataset only, which matches a licence whose subject is a database and which says in Section 2.4 that it does not cover the individual contents.
info Rubric 3 odrl:permission none

The permissions follow Section 3.1, which grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use the database and states that "These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour." cc:CommercialUse, cc:DerivativeWorks, dalicc:ModifiedWorks, derive, modify, reproduce, distribute, display and present are all covered.
info Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition none

dalicc:promote rests on Section 2.3(c), "This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database." dalicc:ChangeLicense rests on Section 4.2(a), the requirement to convey only under the terms of this licence, and on the last sentence of Section 4.4, "You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License."
minor Rubric 5 odrl:duty none

The record carries a licence-wide cc:ShareAlike duty. ODC-By has no share-alike clause: its preamble says the licence is "intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use this Database subject only to the attribution requirements set out in Section 4", and the Open Definition and SPDX both treat it as attribution-only. What the text does say, in Section 4.2(a), is that if You publicly convey the database, a derivative database or the database in a collective database, You must "Do so only under the terms of this License". That sentence is the whole basis for the duty and it is debated in practice. Left unchanged, because removing it is an interpretive decision that changes every compatibility answer this record gives, and it is put to the association instead.
info Rubric 5 odrl:duty none

cc:Attribution and cc:Notice hang on distribute, modify and derive, which matches Section 4.2, the notice obligations, and Section 4.3, the notice for a produced work with its model sentence "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License."
major Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer applied

dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer did not hold a clause of the licence at all: it held the standard website disclaimer of opendatacommons.org, "Open Data Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services of any kind ...", which is the boilerplate printed above every licence on that site. Replaced with Section 7.1 of the licence, quoted verbatim, and Section 8.1 with 8.2 added as dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, which the record did not have.
info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:perpetual are supported by Section 3.1 and Section 9.3. Section 10.4 leaves the governing law to the jurisdiction where the terms are enforced.
gap Rubric 8 record none

Section 9.1 and 9.4, automatic termination on breach with reinstatement after the breach ceases, Section 4.4, the automatic offer to every downstream recipient, and Section 5, the moral-rights handling, have no vocabulary terms. Proposed terms: dalicc:terminationOnBreach, dalicc:downstreamOffer, dalicc:moralRightsReserved. Unlike ODbL this licence has no technological measures clause, so no anti-DRM term is needed here.
info Rubric 9 record none

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

the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) flagged that this record and CC-BY-SA-4.0 had an identical deontic signature, which is wrong for a pair made of an attribution-only database licence and a copyleft content licence. After the review the two differ, because CC-BY-SA-4.0 regained dalicc:chargeDistributionFee, but the deeper cause is the cc:ShareAlike duty in this record, which is the open question above. Inside its own family this record now differs from ODbL exactly where the documents differ: ODbL adds Section 4.4 share alike, Section 4.6 access to derivative databases and Section 4.7 technological measures.
major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

Section 3.1 reads: "Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, the Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, terminable (but only under Section 9) license to Use the Database 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 the cc:Attribution and cc:Notice duties that Section 4 attaches to every use.
major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

dalicc:promote was prohibited on the strength of "This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database." (Section 2.3(c)). That sentence leaves trademarks outside the licence 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.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

odrl:modify and odrl:derive carried a dalicc:modificationNotice duty that no sentence of the text supports. Section 4.2 asks whoever Publicly Conveys the Database or a Derivative Database to do so under this License, to "Include a copy of this License or its Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)" and to "Keep intact any copyright or Database Right notices and notices that refer to this License"; nothing asks for a notice of the changes made. Removed, as on the ODbL record.

Settled in version 2 (1)

settled odrl:prohibition

Section 4.4 opens with "You may not sublicense the Database" and the record does not say so. dalicc:sublicense exists in the vocabulary and is used by no record. Proposed as one library-wide correction together with ODbL and the Creative Commons ports.

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, 1 identification detail and 1 prohibition, removed 1 license-wide duty, changed 1 clause text and recorded the review state. Later changes permitted relicensing with the notice as a duty, 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
21 changes
- added dalicc:LiabilityLimitation "Subject to any liability that may not be excluded or limited by law, the Licensor is not liable for, and expressly excludes, all liability for loss or damage however and whenever caused to anyone by any use under this License, whether by You or by anyone else, and whether caused by any fault on the part of the Licensor or not. This exclusion of liability includes, but is not limited to, any special, incidental, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages such as loss of revenue, data, anticipated profits, and lost business. This exclusion applies even if the Licensor 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 Licensor."
  
  Review finding dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer did not hold a clause of the licence at all: it held the standard website disclaimer of opendatacommons.org, "Open Data Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services of any kind ...", which is the boilerplate printed above every licence on that site. Replaced with Section 7.1 of the licence, quoted verbatim, and Section 8.1 with 8.2 added as dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, which the record did not have.
- changed dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "The Database is licensed by the Licensor \"as is\" and without any warranty of any kind, either express, implied, or arising by statute, custom, course of dealing, or trade usage. Licensor specifically disclaims any and all implied warranties or conditions of title, non-infringement, accuracy or completeness, the presence or absence of errors, fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, or otherwise. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to You."
  
  was dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer " Open Data Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services of any kind. Open Data Commons has no formal relationship with you. Your receipt of this document does not create any kind of agent-client relationship. Please seek the advice of a suitably qualified legal professional licensed to practice in your jurisdiction before using this document. No warranties and disclaimer of any damages. This information is provided ‘as is‘, and this site makes no warranties on the information provided. Any damages resulting from its use are disclaimed."
  
  Review finding dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer did not hold a clause of the licence at all: it held the standard website disclaimer of opendatacommons.org, "Open Data Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services of any kind ...", which is the boilerplate printed above every licence on that site. Replaced with Section 7.1 of the licence, quoted verbatim, and Section 8.1 with 8.2 added as dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, which the record did not have.
- 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.
- removed duty cc:ShareAlike
  
  Review decision Review decision 9: the Open Data Commons Attribution License is attribution only and imposes no share-alike condition.
- added prohibition dalicc:sublicense
  
  Review decision Review decision 1: every Creative Commons record except the CC0 dedication, plus the Open Database License and the Open Data Commons Attribution License, forbids sublicensing in as many words.
- added spdx:licenseId "ODC-By-1.0"
  
  Review finding The record carried no SPDX identifier although its title is word for word the SPDX name of ODC-By-1.0 and its cc:legalcode is the SPDX seeAlso URL. Added.
- added permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  Manual edit Permit relicensing on permissive licences; the notice clause is a duty, not a bar. Library convention 15: a licence that asks for no reciprocity and no source code asks only that the notice travels with the copy, which is a duty on the acts it governs and not a bar on putting the copy under other terms. dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore a permission here, and the prohibition the record carried before is removed. The text reads: "Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, the Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, terminable (but only under Section 9) license to Use the Database for the duration of any applicable copyright and Database Rights." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.
- removed prohibition dalicc:ChangeLicense
  
  Manual edit Permit relicensing on permissive licences; the notice clause is a duty, not a bar. Library convention 15: a licence that asks for no reciprocity and no source code asks only that the notice travels with the copy, which is a duty on the acts it governs and not a bar on putting the copy under other terms. dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore a permission here, and the prohibition the record carried before is removed. The text reads: "Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, the Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, terminable (but only under Section 9) license to Use the Database for the duration of any applicable copyright and Database Rights." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.
- changed permission cc:CommercialUse
  
  was permission cc:CommercialUse
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour."
- changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  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. Its duty dalicc:compliantLicense is marked as a library convention, family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing.
- changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:Attribution quotes "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License." Its duty cc:Notice quotes "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License."
- changed permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:Attribution quotes "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License." Its duty cc:Notice quotes "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License."
- changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:Attribution quotes "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License." Its duty cc:Notice quotes "Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License."
- changed prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  was prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database."
- changed prohibition dalicc:sublicense
  
  was prohibition dalicc:sublicense
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "You may not sublicense the Database."
- added permission dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  Manual edit Section 3.1 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. The attribution and notice conditions of Section 4 apply to it as they apply to every use of the Database.
- 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.
- changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  Manual edit No sentence of the text asks for a notice of changes: Section 4.2 asks for a copy or the URI of the licence and intact notices, nothing more.
- changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]
  
  Manual edit No sentence of the text asks for a notice of changes: Section 4.2 asks for a copy or the URI of the licence and intact notices, nothing more.
- removed prohibition dalicc:promote
  
  Manual edit The sentence the prohibition rested on, "This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database." (Section 2.3(c)), is silence about endorsement, which the default rule of the core dependency graph covers.
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.