{"id":"Multics","title":"Multics License","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://opensource.org/license/Multics","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"Models the Multics License, an MIT-style permissive grant with one extra condition: the historical background of the software must travel with every copy. The record follows MIT and adds dalicc:addStatement for that condition. The licence carries no warranty disclaimer at all.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"File name, license id, SPDX id and IRI agree. dct:publisher is left out: the text names donors and copyright holders but no steward of the licence.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Software only, following MIT. The text covers 'these programs and their documentation', which is the same wording MIT uses, and the MIT record carries no creative-work type.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant reads: 'Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute these programs and their documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted'. The record permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee. No sublicensing is granted, so no odrl:grantUse, which is where the record differs from MIT.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote for 'that the names of MIT, HIS, BULL or BULL HN not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the programs without specific prior written permission'.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:addStatement hang off distribute, modify and derive: the proviso requires 'that the below copyright notice and historical background appear in all copies and that both the copyright notice and historical background and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation'. dalicc:addStatement carries the historical background, which is a prescribed statement rather than a licence notice.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The licence has no warranty clause and no liability clause, so neither dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer nor dalicc:LiabilityLimitation is written. This is unusual for the library, where 329 of 344 records carry a disclaimer, and it is faithful: there is nothing to quote. The grant proviso is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses instead.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"No legal system and no term named: dalicc:worldwide, dalicc:perpetual.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"record","description":"No vocabulary gap. The licence is silent about patents and about termination.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check of app.services.composer, run with the 39 axioms of licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_default.ttl, returned no conflicts.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"Nearest siblings are MIT and IscLicense. Multics differs from MIT by the historical-background statement, by the express no-advertising bar and by the absence of both a sublicensing grant and a warranty disclaimer.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"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 earlier reading wrote is removed. The text reads: \"Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute these programs and their documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,provided that the below copyright notice and historical background appear in all copies and that both the copyright notice and historical background and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the names of MIT, HIS, BULL or BULL HN not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the programs without specific prior written permission.\" The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Reciprocal and source-available","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text. The source has a missing space after 'granted,provided'; the quotation keeps it as it stands, because the rubric asks for the clause word for word."}