{"id":"DeveloperLicense","title":"Developer License","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/developer-licence.pdf","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The legal text was listed as unavailable before the review; the PDF was fetched and converted, so the record could be checked. The document is the National Archives Developer Licence 2.0, a template for a free, time-limited, revocable evaluation licence based on the Data Exploration Licence for the Geospatial Commission Partner Bodies. Applied: the validity type, which said perpetual for a licence that runs twelve months. The distribution permission contradicts the restrictions and is proposed for removal.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"SPDX has no entry for this licence. cc:legalcode and dct:source point at the PDF at the National Archives, which resolves and is what was read.","action":"none"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:alternative","description":"The record has no dct:alternative, so keyword search finds it only by its exact title, and the title in the document is \"Developer Licence 2.0\" with the British spelling while the record says \"Developer License\". Proposed rather than applied, because the record identifier and the title are published values.","action":"proposed","change":"dct:alternative \"Developer Licence\",\n        \"Developer Licence 2.0\",\n        \"UK Developer Licence\" ;"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:target","description":"The asset collection included dcmitype:Software. The subject of this licence is Exploration Data, defined as data made available for research and development; unlike the other National Archives records, whose definition of Information names source code expressly, this document never mentions software. Removed, under the association's decision that asset types follow the legal text.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:target [ a odrl:AssetCollection ;\n        dct:type dalicc:CreativeWork,\n            dcmitype:Dataset ] ;"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"odrl:distribute is permitted, which the licence forbids: \"Unless we expressly permit you to do so above, you will not make any Exploration Data available to third parties or create any products or services which have benefitted from, relied on or made any use of Exploration Data\". The only exception is providing prototypes to potential customers or investors, with prior agreement and on equivalent terms, which is a narrow permission and not general distribution. Proposed for removal rather than applied, because the prototype exception means the answer is not simply no and the association should decide how to model a permission that needs the licensor's consent.","action":"proposed","change":"remove:\n    odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action odrl:distribute ;\n            odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                    odrl:action cc:Attribution ] ]"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The other permissions are supported by the permitted actions: evaluating the data, using it to research and develop ideas, displaying it or creating working prototypes on the licensee's own equipment, using it in live trials inside the organisation for up to three months, and using small extracts at hackathons and in articles.","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"cc:CommercialUse, dalicc:chargeDistributionFee and dalicc:chargeLicenseFee are prohibited, which the licence supports: it is free of charge and any use beyond evaluation needs a separate commercial licensing arrangement. cc:DerivativeWorks and dalicc:ModifiedWorks are prohibited, which matches the ban on creating products or services that have made use of the data. dalicc:promote rests on \"this doesn't mean you can use [Licensor] branding or trademarks or anything that can be confused with them\".","action":"none"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:modificationNotice are attached to the acts the record permits, which matches the requirement to \"Acknowledge that you're using Exploration Data and that you're doing so in the right way by using [insert details of any acknowledgement statement]\".","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"info","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer is clause 5, No Warranty, quoted verbatim including the [Licensor] placeholders of the template. Clause 6, Liabilities, is not carried, and neither are the requirements in the Main Terms: registering with the licensor, returning or destroying prototypes within seven days, keeping the data secure and keeping records open to inspection.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:validityType","description":"dalicc:validityType said dalicc:perpetual. The licence is not perpetual: it \"lets you use [Licensor] Data for 12 months\", renews automatically unless either party ends it, ends automatically 24 months after the last request for updates, grants a \"revocable licence\" and can be terminated by either party with immediate effect. Changed to dalicc:specifyPeriod, the vocabulary term the composer already writes for a licence granted for a period.","action":"applied","change":"dalicc:validityType dalicc:specifyPeriod ;"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"record","description":"Most of this licence is outside the deontic vocabulary: the obligation to register before access, the duty to return or destroy the data and any prototypes at the end, the security and record keeping duties, the audit right, the feedback duty and the ban on retaining the output of a live trial. Proposed terms: dalicc:registerBeforeUse, dalicc:destroyOnTermination, dalicc:keepSecure, dalicc:keepRecords, dalicc:auditRight, dalicc:provideFeedback.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"minor","field":"record","description":"The consistency check reports one conflict, the same one the pre-review baseline listed: odrl:derive is permitted while cc:DerivativeWorks is prohibited, and the dependency graph derives that odrl:derive implies cc:DerivativeWorks. Checked against the text: the licence does allow the licensee to build prototypes from the data and does forbid supplying any product or service that has made use of it, so the two statements together are a fair reading of the document and the conflict is an artefact of a dependency graph that cannot separate making a derivative from publishing one. Two ways out: drop the odrl:derive permission, which loses information, or split the axiom so that odrl:derive implies cc:DerivativeWorks only where distribution is permitted. Left open for the association's decision; nothing was changed.","action":"proposed","change":"option A, remove:\n    odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action odrl:derive ; ... ]\noption B, weaken the axiom derive implies DerivativeWorks in licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_default.ttl"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The document says of itself: \"This United Kingdom Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF) licence is based on the Data Exploration Licence for the Geospatial Commission Partner Bodies (V2)\", which is the other Ordnance Survey record in this review group. The two records are modelled differently, mostly because DataExplorationLicence carried every statement twice and prohibited display and present while this one permits them. Both now need the same decision on the derive conflict.","action":"none"}],"family":"Government licenses (United Kingdom, Canada)","port_of":"DataExplorationLicence","variant_kind":"edition","notes":"The review group input listed this record as text-unavailable, no source retrieved. The PDF at the cc:legalcode URL was retrieved and read for this review. The document is a template with [Licensor] placeholders rather than a licence granted by a named body, which is worth saying on the site: a user cannot receive data under this record as it stands. Nothing in this review is legal advice."}