{"id":"Beerware","title":"Beerware License","reviewed_on":"2026-09-22","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Beerware","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"Models the two-sentence Beerware licence. Everything is permitted as long as the notice stays with the file, so the record carries one duty, cc:Notice, on the acts that hand the work on. The beer sentence is a request and not a condition, so it is quoted and not modelled. The text has no warranty and no liability clause at all.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"File name, record identifier, SPDX identifier and IRI local name are all Beerware.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software. The licence is written as a comment header of a source file.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant reads \"As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff\". The record therefore permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, sublicense, commercial use, derivative works, modified works, the distribution fee and the licence fee. Nothing is carved out of \"whatever you want\".","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"dalicc:ChangeLicense is permitted and carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, because the one condition, the notice, has to survive the relicensing.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"No prohibitions. The text has no trademark, endorsement or advertising clause, so dalicc:promote is not prohibited although most permissive records carry it. MIT-0 records the same silence.","action":"none"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Notice hangs off odrl:distribute, odrl:modify and odrl:derive, and is the whole of the licence: \"As long as you retain this notice\". There is no separate attribution clause, so cc:Attribution is not used.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:duty","description":"The beer sentence, \"If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return\", is not a duty. It is optional on its face, and the Fedora note on the text says that a mandatory version would make the licence non-free. It is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"No dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and no dalicc:LiabilityLimitation. The text has neither clause. The absence of the property says the text is silent, not that the author gave a warranty.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"The text names no legal system and sets no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"info","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The beer request is quoted rather than modelled. It is not a vocabulary gap: a request that binds nobody has no deontic statement to make.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check of app.services.composer against the dependency graph dg_default returned an empty conflict list.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The nearest sibling is MIT-0, which also has no prohibition. The difference is that MIT-0 has no duty either, while Beerware keeps the notice, so this record carries cc:Notice and permits dalicc:ChangeLicense with the dalicc:compliantLicense duty rather than with none.","action":"none"}],"family":"Permissive variants","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"variant_of":null,"notes":"The text was taken from the Fedora licensing page, which reproduces the original file header and carries the note about the optional beer clause. cc:legalcode points at that page and dct:source at the SPDX page. The name Poul-Henning Kamp appears inside the quoted licence text, where the original runs the signature on from the last sentence."}