Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0

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 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.

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   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.

2. Version 1

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

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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.