UK Open Government License for Public Sector Information

Also known as Open Government License.

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/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation

Permissions

Change license by library convention
Duties
- Use a compliant license by library convention
Charge distribution fee from the text
Charge license fee from the text
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Derive 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
Grant use from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
No-warranty notice from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

Promote 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.

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

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

The Information is licensed 'as is' and the Information Provider and/or Licensor excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Limitation of liability

The Information Provider and/or Licensor are not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. The Information Provider does not guarantee the continued supply of the Information.

Info

Target asset types: Creative work (i.e. text, picture, sound, movie), Dataset, Software
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
Legal code: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher: UK Government
Attribution name: UK Government
SPDX identifier: OGL-UK-3.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation

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/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation",
  "license-title": "UK Open Government License for Public Sector Information",
  "spdx-id": "OGL-UK-3.0",
  "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/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation> .

RDF, JSON-LD

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

HTML attribution

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation" rel="license">UK Open Government License for Public Sector Information</a>.</p>

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

Badge

Markdown

[![License: UK Open Government License for Public Sector Information](https://dalicc.net/license-library/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation/badge.svg" alt="License: UK Open Government License for Public Sector Information"></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, 4 applied to the record, 0 proposed, 2 settled in a later version

The record models version 3.0 of the UK Open Government Licence, confirmed from the legal text itself, which closes with "This is version 3.0 of the Open Government Licence". The permissive side of the model is right. Applied: the SPDX identifier OGL-UK-3.0, the licence-notice duty and the modified-works permission. Two prohibitions that the text does not support, share alike and add statement, are proposed for removal; they are shared with the Open Supreme Court Licence and the Canadian Open Government Licence.

12 findings

minor Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

The record carried no SPDX identifier. cc:legalcode is the seeAlso URL of the SPDX entry OGL-UK-3.0, Open Government Licence v3.0, and the fetched text confirms the version. The proposal file rated this medium on the URL alone; the version statement in the document makes it certain. Added.
info Rubric 1 cc:legalcode none

cc:legalcode and dct:source are the same National Archives URL, which redirects to https and resolves. The http form is the one SPDX lists, so it was left unchanged.
info Rubric 2 odrl:target none

The asset collection is dalicc:CreativeWork, dcmitype:Dataset and dcmitype:Software. The family-rule baseline flags the software type on the National Archives records as suspect; the text settles it in favour of keeping it: the licence defines "Information" as "information protected by copyright or by database right (for example, literary and artistic works, content, data and source code)", so source code is expressly in scope.
info Rubric 3 odrl:permission none

The permissions follow the freedoms list: copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; and exploit it commercially and non-commercially. odrl:grantUse, dalicc:chargeDistributionFee and dalicc:chargeLicenseFee all rest on the commercial exploitation freedom and on the absence of any onward-licensing restriction. dalicc:noWarrantyNotice rests on the no-warranty section.
major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

dalicc:ModifiedWorks, distributing a modified version and making it available to the public, was missing although the licence permits adapting the Information and publishing, distributing and transmitting it in the same list, and the sibling record NCGL-UK-2.0 carries the permission on the identical wording. Added.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

The licence requires two things when the information is used and the record modelled only one. Section "You must (where you do any of the above)": "acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence", with the default statement "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." cc:Attribution was attached to cc:DerivativeWorks and odrl:distribute; cc:Notice was missing everywhere, although the attribution statement is itself a licence notice and the licence asks for a link to itself. Added next to cc:Attribution in both permissions, which is how the sibling record NCGL-UK-2.0 models the same sentence.
info Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer none

dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer holds both paragraphs of the No warranty section, quoted verbatim, including the liability sentence. The record has no separate dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, which is the convention of all four National Archives records in this review group and is left alone. The Exemptions section, personal data, unpublished information, logos and crests, military insignia, third-party rights, patents, trade marks and design rights, identity documents, is not carried anywhere in the record.
info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:perpetual match the grant, "a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence". The governing law is the jurisdiction of the Information Provider's principal place of business, which the model has no field for: cc:jurisdiction records the territorial scope of the grant, not the governing law.
gap Rubric 8 record none

Three clauses have no vocabulary term. The exemptions list, which carves personal data, unpublished information, insignia and third-party rights out of the grant; the automatic end of the rights on breach; and the statement of compatibility with CC-BY-4.0 and ODC-By-1.0, which is exactly the kind of fact the compatibility checker should know. Proposed terms: dalicc:exemptedMaterial, dalicc:terminationOnBreach, dalicc:compatibleWith.
info Rubric 9 record none

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

The National Archives records in this review group, OGL 3.0, NCGL 2.0, the Open Supreme Court Licence and the Developer Licence, share one drafting pattern but were not modelled alike: OGL 3.0 and the Supreme Court licence carried the share-alike and add-statement prohibitions and no notice duty, while NCGL 2.0 carried the notice duty and neither prohibition. After the review the notice duty and the modified-works permission are uniform; the two unsupported prohibitions are proposed for removal in both records. the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) flagged that this record, the Supreme Court licence and the Canadian Open Government Licence had one identical deontic signature; they still do, and for OGL 3.0 against the Canadian licence that is close to correct, since the two texts say almost the same thing.
major Rubric 10 record applied

Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement although the licence prescribes an attribution statement and says nothing about share-alike, and it did not state the database right although the licence covers 'copyright and database right material'.

Settled in version 2 (2)

settled odrl:prohibition

cc:ShareAlike is modelled as an odrl:Prohibition. Nothing in the text forbids the licensee from placing an adaptation under a share-alike licence; the opposite is true, the licence states that its terms are compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 and with the Open Data Commons Attribution License. In ODRL a prohibition says the licensee must not do the act, so this statement asserts something the licence does not say, and it changes every compatibility answer against a share-alike licence. The family-rule baseline raises the same point for permissive software licences under rule 5b. Proposed for removal, together with the two sibling records that carry the identical block.
settled odrl:prohibition

dalicc:addStatement is modelled as an odrl:Prohibition, which the vocabulary reads as: the licensee must pass the licence on unchanged and may not attach additional terms or notices. The licence says the opposite in its permission list, the information may be combined with other information or included in the licensee's own product or application, and it imposes no pass-through condition at all. Proposed for removal.

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 identification detail and 1 permission, changed 2 permissions and recorded the review state. Later changes brought it in line with its family and its text in the verification of 2026-09-15, permitted relicensing with the notice as a duty, recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on, named the license the record itself is published under and removed the quotes that do not name the act they support.

View version 2 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML
18 changes
- 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.
- changed permission cc:DerivativeWorks with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission cc:DerivativeWorks with duties [cc:Attribution]
  
  Review finding The licence requires two things when the information is used and the record modelled only one. Section "You must (where you do any of the above)": "acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence", with the default statement "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." cc:Attribution was attached to cc:DerivativeWorks and odrl:distribute; cc:Notice was missing everywhere, although the attribution statement is itself a licence notice and the licence asks for a link to itself. Added next to cc:Attribution in both permissions, which is how the sibling record NCGL-UK-2.0 models the same sentence.
- added permission dalicc:ModifiedWorks
  
  Review finding dalicc:ModifiedWorks, distributing a modified version and making it available to the public, was missing although the licence permits adapting the Information and publishing, distributing and transmitting it in the same list, and the sibling record NCGL-UK-2.0 carries the permission on the identical wording. Added.
- changed permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution]
  
  Review finding The licence requires two things when the information is used and the record modelled only one. Section "You must (where you do any of the above)": "acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence", with the default statement "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." cc:Attribution was attached to cc:DerivativeWorks and odrl:distribute; cc:Notice was missing everywhere, although the attribution statement is itself a licence notice and the licence asks for a link to itself. Added next to cc:Attribution in both permissions, which is how the sibling record NCGL-UK-2.0 models the same sentence.
- added spdx:licenseId "OGL-UK-3.0"
  
  Review finding The record carried no SPDX identifier. cc:legalcode is the seeAlso URL of the SPDX entry OGL-UK-3.0, Open Government Licence v3.0, and the fetched text confirms the version. The proposal file rated this medium on the URL alone; the version statement in the document makes it certain. Added.
- added dalicc:LiabilityLimitation "The Information Provider and/or Licensor are not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. The Information Provider does not guarantee the continued supply of the Information."
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement although the licence prescribes an attribution statement and says nothing about share-alike, and it did not state the database right although the licence covers 'copyright and database right material'.
- changed dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "The Information is licensed 'as is' and the Information Provider and/or Licensor excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law."
  
  was dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "The Information is licensed 'as is' and the Information Provider and/or Licensor excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law. The Information Provider and/or Licensor are not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. The Information Provider does not guarantee the continued supply of the Information."
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement although the licence prescribes an attribution statement and says nothing about share-alike, and it did not state the database right although the licence covers 'copyright and database right material'.
- added permission dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement although the licence prescribes an attribution statement and says nothing about share-alike, and it did not state the database right although the licence covers 'copyright and database right material'.
- removed prohibition cc:ShareAlike
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement although the licence prescribes an attribution statement and says nothing about share-alike, and it did not state the database right although the licence covers 'copyright and database right material'.
- removed prohibition dalicc:addStatement
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement although the licence prescribes an attribution statement and says nothing about share-alike, and it did not state the database right although the licence covers 'copyright and database right material'.
- 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: "The Licensor grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.
- changed permission cc:DerivativeWorks with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission cc:DerivativeWorks with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  Manual edit Its duty cc:Attribution quotes "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."
- 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: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 public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."
- 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 cc:DerivativeWorks with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission cc:DerivativeWorks with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  Manual edit Removed the quoted evidence of duty cc:Attribution on cc:DerivativeWorks, duty cc:Attribution on odrl:distribute: the quoted sentence does not name the act. The statements stay, read from the text without a linked quote.
- changed permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  was permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]
  
  Manual edit Removed the quoted evidence of duty cc:Attribution on cc:DerivativeWorks, duty cc:Attribution on odrl:distribute: the quoted sentence does not name the act. The statements stay, read from the text without a linked quote.
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.

Jurisdiction ports and editions

1 record adapts this license to another country's law or reissue it under another name. Each has its own record; they are listed here because they belong to the same family, not because they say the same. See port and edition in the glossary.

1 jurisdiction port

Open Supreme Court Licence Worldwide

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.