Academic Free License v1.2
Also known as AFL 1.2, AFL-1.2, Academic Free License v1.2.
- Commercial use
- allowed
- Share alike
- not required
- Attribution
- required (keep the copyright and license notices)
Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.
Permissions
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Charge distribution fee from the text Charging a fee for the act of providing a copy of the work to someone else.
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Commercial use from the text Using the work to generate income, directly or indirectly, for example by selling it or by using it in advertising.
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Derivative works from the text Distributing an adaptation of the work and making it available to the public.
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Derive from the text Creating a new work from the work, such as a translation, adaptation or arrangement of it or of a part of it.
Duties
- Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
- Modification notice from the text The text says: "You must retain, in the Source Code of any Derivative Works that You create, all copyright, patent or trademark notices from the Source Code of the Original Work, as well as any notices of licensing and any descriptive text identified therein as an "Attribution Notice." You must cause the Source Code for any Derivative Works that You create to carry a prominent Attribution Notice reasonably calculated to inform recipients that You have modified the Original Work." Marking a changed work as changed, saying how it differs from the original and keeping earlier notices of change.
- Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
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Duties
- Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
- Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
- Source code from the text Providing access to the source code of the work with every copy distributed.
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Modified works from the text Distributing a modified version of the work that does not amount to a new, derivative work.
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Modify from the text Altering the work, for example by updating it, without creating a new work; an alteration that creates a new work is Derive.
Duties
- Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
- Modification notice from the text The text says: "You must retain, in the Source Code of any Derivative Works that You create, all copyright, patent or trademark notices from the Source Code of the Original Work, as well as any notices of licensing and any descriptive text identified therein as an "Attribution Notice." You must cause the Source Code for any Derivative Works that You create to carry a prominent Attribution Notice reasonably calculated to inform recipients that You have modified the Original Work." Marking a changed work as changed, saying how it differs from the original and keeping earlier notices of change.
- Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
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Patent grant from the text Granting a license under the patent claims that a contributor holds and that the contribution necessarily infringes.
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Present from the text Performing the work in public, including by broadcast or other communication to the public.
Prohibitions
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Promote from the text Not permitted: Promote. Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.
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Sublicense from the text Not permitted: Sublicense. Granting a third party rights in the work under a license of the licensee's own, rather than passing on the original license.
License-wide duties
This license states no duties that apply to the work as a whole.
What applies by default
The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.
No default rule of that graph reaches this license: it speaks about every act the rules are about.
Further terms
These are the things the license says about itself beyond the acts it permits, forbids and requires: when it ends, how long there is to put a breach right, which law governs it, and so on. A term that comes from the DALICC vocabulary links to its definition.
- Patent license ends if you sue
- Yes. Not a ban on suing: a patent claim over the work ends the patent license, or the whole license, as the text provides.
- Terminates on breach
- Yes
Clauses
Warranty disclaimer
Licensor warrants that the copyright in and to the Original Work is owned by the Licensor or that the Original Work is distributed by Licensor under a valid current license from the copyright owner. Except as expressly stated in the immediately proceeding sentence, the Original Work is provided under this License on an "AS IS" BASIS and WITHOUT WARRANTY, either express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL WORK IS WITH YOU. This DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY constitutes an essential part of this License. No license to Original Work is granted hereunder except under this disclaimer.
Limitation of liability
Under no circumstances and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, shall the Licensor be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or the use of the Original Work including, without limitation, damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses. This limitation of liability shall not apply to liability for death or personal injury resulting from Licensor's negligence to the extent applicable law prohibits such limitation. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so this exclusion and limitation may not apply to You.
Additional clauses
License to Source Code. The term "Source Code" means the preferred form of the Original Work for making modifications to it and all available documentation describing how to modify the Original Work. Licensor hereby agrees to provide a machine-readable copy of the Source Code of the Original Work along with each copy of the Original Work that Licensor distributes. Licensor reserves the right to satisfy this obligation by placing a machine-readable copy of the Source Code in an information repository reasonably calculated to permit inexpensive and convenient access by You for as long as Licensor continues to distribute the Original Work, and by publishing the address of that information repository in a notice immediately following the copyright notice that applies to the Original Work. Mutual Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims that are essential to use that software. Right to Use. You may use the Original Work in all ways not otherwise restricted or conditioned by this License or by law, and Licensor promises not to interfere with or be responsible for such uses by You. This license is Copyright (C) 2002 Lawrence E. Rosen. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this license without modification. This license may not be modified without the express written permission of its copyright owner.
Info
- Target asset types
- Software
- Region / jurisdiction
- Worldwide
- Validity
- Perpetual
- Source
- https://spdx.org/licenses/AFL-1.2.html
- Legal code
- http://opensource.linux-mirror.org/licenses/afl-1.2.txt
- This description is published under
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- Publisher
- Lawrence Rosen
- Attribution name
- Lawrence E. Rosen
- SPDX identifier
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AFL-1.2on the SPDX license list - DALICC identifier
AFL-1.2
This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.
Use this license
Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.
JSON sidecar
{
"license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-1.2",
"license-title": "Academic Free License v1.2",
"spdx-id": "AFL-1.2",
"attribution": "Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holder]",
"asset": null,
"generated-by": "DALICC"
}
RDF, Turtle
@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .
<https://example.org/my-work>
cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-1.2> .
RDF, JSON-LD
{
"@context": {
"cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
},
"@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
"cc:license": {
"@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-1.2"
}
}
HTML attribution
<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/AFL-1.2" rel="license">Academic Free License v1.2</a>.</p>
This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.
Badge
Markdown
[](https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-1.2)
HTML
<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-1.2"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/AFL-1.2/badge.svg" alt="License: Academic Free License v1.2"></a>
Review
- Written from the license text by
- Giray Havur
- Written on
- 2026-09-15
- Second review
- not yet done
- Record changed since this review
- yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
- Findings
- 9 recorded, 6 applied to the record, 0 proposed
Version 1.2 of the Academic Free License keeps the grant and the patent licence of version 1.1 and replaces the Right of Attribution with the Attribution Rights clause that every later version carries, which is why this record adds a modification notice to odrl:modify and odrl:derive. It also adds the Right to Use clause. Nothing here is legal advice.
9 findings
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info Rubric 2
odrl:targetapplieddcmitype:Software alone, the type 32 of the library's software records carry, among them MIT, BSD-3-Clause, GPL-3.0-only and the sibling OSL-3.0. These texts license an "original work of authorship", which would also fit dalicc:CreativeWork, the type the AFL-3.0 record carries beside Software and Dataset; the review group keeps the narrower reading its review plan prescribes, so that all nine records of the family answer alike and the association can widen them in one pass.
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major Rubric 3
odrl:permissionappliedThe grant is that of version 1.1, word for word: a "non-sublicenseable license (1) to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, perform, distribute and/or sell copies of the Original Work and derivative works thereof", with the patent licence in paragraph (2). Permissions are therefore identical to AFL-1.1.
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major Rubric 4
odrl:prohibitionappliedAs in version 1.1: dalicc:sublicense because the grant is "non-sublicenseable", dalicc:promote from the Exclusions from License Grant clause and dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination from the Mutual Termination for Patent Action clause.
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major Rubric 5
odrl:dutyappliedAttribution Rights says: "You must cause the Source Code for any Derivative Works that You create to carry a prominent Attribution Notice reasonably calculated to inform recipients that You have modified the Original Work." That is dalicc:modificationNotice on odrl:modify and odrl:derive, alongside cc:Attribution and cc:Notice for the notices the same clause requires to be retained. cc:SourceCode stays on odrl:distribute, as in AFL-1.1.
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minor Rubric 6
dalicc:additionalClausesappliedWarranty and liability are quoted into their own fields. dalicc:additionalClauses carries the License to Source Code clause, the Mutual Termination for Patent Action clause, the Right to Use clause that version 1.2 adds and the notice that the licence text may not be modified.
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info Rubric 7
cc:jurisdictionappliedVersion 1.2 still names no forum and no governing law, so cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide and the grant is perpetual on its own words.
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gap Rubric 8
dalicc:additionalClausesnoneAs in AFL-1.1, the automatic termination of the licence has no property to carry it. Proposed term dalicc:terminatesOnBreach; the clause is quoted instead.
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info Rubric 9
recordnoneThe consistency check of app.services.composer with the axioms of dg_default returned an empty list for this record.
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info Rubric 10
familynoneAFL-1.2 differs from AFL-1.1 in one operative place, the Attribution Rights clause, and in the added Right to Use clause. The two records differ exactly there: the modification notice on odrl:modify and odrl:derive.
Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.
History
This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.
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Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur
The changes since version 1 recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on and named the license the record itself is published under.
View version 2 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML
3 changes
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changed
permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]was
permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]Manual edit Its duty dalicc:modificationNotice quotes "You must retain, in the Source Code of any Derivative Works that You create, all copyright, patent or trademark notices from the Source Code of the Original Work, as well as any notices of licensing and any descriptive text identified therein as an "Attribution Notice." You must cause the Source Code for any Derivative Works that You create to carry a prominent Attribution Notice reasonably calculated to inform recipients that You have modified the Original Work."
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changed
permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]was
permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice]Manual edit Its duty dalicc:modificationNotice quotes "You must retain, in the Source Code of any Derivative Works that You create, all copyright, patent or trademark notices from the Source Code of the Original Work, as well as any notices of licensing and any descriptive text identified therein as an "Attribution Notice." You must cause the Source Code for any Derivative Works that You create to carry a prominent Attribution Notice reasonably calculated to inform recipients that You have modified the Original Work."
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added
dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.
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Version 1
Created from the license text on 2026-09-15 (Academic Free and Open Software).
Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.
Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.