{"id":"BSD-2-Clause","title":"The 2-Clause BSD License","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/BSD-2-Clause.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record models the two-clause BSD license correctly in substance: the retention of the copyright notice, the list of conditions and the disclaimer appears as cc:Attribution and cc:Notice duties on distribute, modify and derive. Two statements are not supported by the text, a prohibition on changing the license and a permission to use the licensor's trademark for promotion, and both are family-level decisions rather than isolated slips.","findings":[{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"The record prohibits dalicc:ChangeLicense. The two-clause BSD license is permissive: it requires only that the notice and disclaimer be retained, and says nothing that stops a licensee from redistributing under other terms. The same prohibition sits in BSD-3-Clause, BSD-4-Clause and IscLicense but not in MIT, 0BSD or the zlib record, so the family is internally inconsistent. One decision for the whole family, left open for the association's decision.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"# remove\nodrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:ChangeLicense ] ;\n"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:permission","description":"dalicc:promote is permitted, which reads as \"the licensor allows you to use its trademark for advertising\". The two-clause text neither grants nor withholds trademark rights; it simply has no endorsement clause (that clause is what makes the three-clause variant). Silence is better modelled by omitting the statement than by permitting it.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"# remove\nodrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:promote ] ;\n"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:publisher","description":"No dct:publisher. The two-clause text has no single steward, so \"- not specified -\" as used by 0BSD would at least make the gap explicit.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"family","description":"Checked against the sibling records: 0BSD has no duties, BSD-2-Clause adds the notice and attribution duties, BSD-3-Clause adds the endorsement prohibition (dalicc:promote), BSD-4-Clause adds the advertising acknowledgement in dalicc:additionalClauses. The four records do differ by exactly one step each, which is the expected shape.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"major","field":"record","description":"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 permitted dalicc:promote although the two-clause text says nothing about trademarks or endorsement, and it kept the liability sentence inside dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer. The paragraph is split at 'IN NO EVENT SHALL', as the six new BSD records split it.","action":"applied"}],"family":"BSD family (0BSD, 2, 3 and 4 clause)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":"version","notes":"Nothing was changed. Both findings are family-level modelling decisions."}