{"id":"Unlicense","title":"The Unlicense","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/Unlicense.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The record models the Unlicense, a dedication of the software to the public domain with a permissive fallback. It follows Cc010Universal: every act is permitted, nothing is prohibited and no duty is attached, with the dedication paragraph quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. Unlike Cc010Universal it carries no dalicc:promote prohibition, because the text says nothing about trademarks.","findings":[{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant reads: \"Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.\" The record permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, grantUse, sublicense, change of license, commercial use, derivative works, modified works, the distribution fee and the license fee. Sublicensing and relicensing follow from a dedication that keeps nothing back, and sell supports both fee terms.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"No duties, and no prohibitions. This and MIT-0 are the two records of the review group that impose nothing at all on the licensee.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Cc010Universal prohibits dalicc:promote because CC0 states that no trademark or patent rights are waived. The Unlicense has no such sentence, so the prohibition is not written here. This is the one deontic difference between the two dedications in the library.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The dedication paragraph is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, because the relinquishment of copyright in perpetuity is the substance of the license and no deontic term expresses it. Cc010Universal quotes its fallback license the same way.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual. The dedication is expressly for jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, with a license as fallback, which the quoted clause carries.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following Cc010Universal. The text licenses software in source or binary form.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts. No share-alike duty is present, so permitting dalicc:ChangeLicense raises no conflict.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"Read against Cc010Universal: the same open model, one prohibition fewer, and a software target instead of a creative-work and dataset target.","action":"none"}],"family":"Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text. The record keeps the SPDX title The Unlicense rather than the project spelling unlicense.org."}