The 2-Clause BSD License

Also known as 2 Clause BSD License, 2-Clause BSD, 2-Clause BSD License, BSD 2 Clause, BSD-2, BSD-2-Clause.

Commercial use: allowed
Share alike: not required
Attribution: required (keep the copyright and license notices)

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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.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/BSD-2-Clause

Permissions

Change license by library convention
Duties
- Use a compliant license by library convention
Charge distribution fee from the text
Commercial use from the text
Derivative works from the text
Derive from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Duties
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

This license states no prohibitions.

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.

Promote by default rule (adopted)

This license says nothing about Promote, and the graph applies this reading in all jurisdictions it covers: it is not permitted unless the license permits it.

A licence that says nothing about endorsement is read as not allowing it: the licence gives the licensee no right to use the licensor's name or marks in a way that states or implies that the licensor endorses the licensee or its product, while stating truthfully that a work is based on or uses the licensed work is a different act that this rule does not decide. A copyright licence grants rights in the work, and the right to use a name or a trademark is a separate right under trademark law and the protection of names, which a silent copyright licence does not pass on. Combining a licence that is silent about endorsement with one that permits it shows a conflict marked as coming from this rule.

Basis Trademark and name rights are separate from copyright: Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 article 9 lets the proprietor of an EU trade mark prevent all third parties not having his consent from using the sign in the course of trade, and Directive (EU) 2015/2436 article 10, 15 U.S.C. 1114 and 1125(a), section 12 BGB and section 43 ABGB protect marks and names in the same way. The library's evidence is Creative Commons 4.0 section 2(b)(2): Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License. A copyright licence that is silent grants no right to use the licensor's name or marks to suggest endorsement (Worldwide)

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.

Limitation of liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Info

Target asset types: Software
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
Legal code: http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
SPDX identifier: BSD-2-Clause on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: BSD-2-Clause

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/BSD-2-Clause",
  "license-title": "The 2-Clause BSD License",
  "spdx-id": "BSD-2-Clause",
  "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/BSD-2-Clause> .

RDF, JSON-LD

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/BSD-2-Clause"
  }
}

HTML attribution

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/BSD-2-Clause" rel="license">The 2-Clause BSD License</a>.</p>

This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.

Badge

Markdown

[![License: The 2-Clause BSD License](https://dalicc.net/license-library/BSD-2-Clause/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/BSD-2-Clause)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/BSD-2-Clause"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/BSD-2-Clause/badge.svg" alt="License: The 2-Clause BSD License"></a>

Review

Status: Reviewed against the license text
Last checked: 2026-09-15
Reviewer: Giray Havur
Verdict: corrected during the review
Record changed since this review: yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings: 5 recorded, 1 applied to the record, 0 proposed, 2 settled in a later version

The record models the two-clause BSD license correctly in substance: the retention of the copyright notice, the list of conditions and the disclaimer appears as cc:Attribution and cc:Notice duties on distribute, modify and derive. Two statements are not supported by the text, a prohibition on changing the license and a permission to use the licensor's trademark for promotion, and both are family-level decisions rather than isolated slips.

3 findings

minor Rubric 1 dct:publisher none

No dct:publisher. The two-clause text has no single steward, so "- not specified -" as used by 0BSD would at least make the gap explicit.
info Rubric 10 family none

Checked against the sibling records: 0BSD has no duties, BSD-2-Clause adds the notice and attribution duties, BSD-3-Clause adds the endorsement prohibition (dalicc:promote), BSD-4-Clause adds the advertising acknowledgement in dalicc:additionalClauses. The four records do differ by exactly one step each, which is the expected shape.
major Rubric 10 record applied

Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency: the record permitted dalicc:promote although the two-clause text says nothing about trademarks or endorsement, and it kept the liability sentence inside dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer. The paragraph is split at 'IN NO EVENT SHALL', as the six new BSD records split it.

Settled in version 2 (2)

settled odrl:prohibition

The record prohibits dalicc:ChangeLicense. The two-clause BSD license is permissive: it requires only that the notice and disclaimer be retained, and says nothing that stops a licensee from redistributing under other terms. The same prohibition sits in BSD-3-Clause, BSD-4-Clause and IscLicense but not in MIT, 0BSD or the zlib record, so the family is internally inconsistent. One decision for the whole family, left open for the association's decision.
settled odrl:permission

dalicc:promote is permitted, which reads as "the licensor allows you to use its trademark for advertising". The two-clause text neither grants nor withholds trademark rights; it simply has no endorsement clause (that clause is what makes the three-clause variant). Silence is better modelled by omitting the statement than by permitting it.

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.

Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

The content review of 2026-09-15 recorded the relation to the record this one was adapted from and recorded the review state. Later changes brought it in line with its family and its text in the verification of 2026-09-15, permitted relicensing with the notice as a duty, recorded which sentence of the text each statement rests on and named the license the record itself is published under.

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10 changes
- added dalicc:reviewStatus dalicc:Reviewed
  
  Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.
- added dalicc:reviewedOn "2026-09-15"^^xsd:date
  
  Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.
- added dalicc:variantKind "version"
  
  Port relation The 2026-09-15 review made the relation between a jurisdiction port and the record it was adapted from explicit in the data.
- added dalicc:LiabilityLimitation "IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE."
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record permitted dalicc:promote although the two-clause text says nothing about trademarks or endorsement, and it kept the liability sentence inside dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer. The paragraph is split at 'IN NO EVENT SHALL', as the six new BSD records split it.
- changed dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED."
  
  was dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE."
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record permitted dalicc:promote although the two-clause text says nothing about trademarks or endorsement, and it kept the liability sentence inside dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer. The paragraph is split at 'IN NO EVENT SHALL', as the six new BSD records split it.
- removed permission dalicc:promote
  
  Manual edit The review's finding on family consistency: the record permitted dalicc:promote although the two-clause text says nothing about trademarks or endorsement, and it kept the liability sentence inside dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer. The paragraph is split at 'IN NO EVENT SHALL', as the six new BSD records split it.
- added permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  Manual edit Permit relicensing on permissive licences; the notice clause is a duty, not a bar. 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 record carried before is removed. The text reads: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.
- removed prohibition dalicc:ChangeLicense
  
  Manual edit Permit relicensing on permissive licences; the notice clause is a duty, not a bar. 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 record carried before is removed. The text reads: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.
- changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense with duties [dalicc:compliantLicense]
  
  Manual edit The statement is marked as a library convention, family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing: the text does not state it in as many words. Its duty dalicc:compliantLicense is marked as a library convention, family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing.
- 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.
Version 1

The version this model had before the content review of 2026-09-15.

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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.