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2026

Microsoft Reciprocal License

Also known as MS Reciprocal License, MS-RL, MSRL, Microsoft Reciprocal License.

Commercial use
allowed
Share alike
required
Attribution
required (keep the copyright and license notices)
Compare with… Add to the compatibility check Download JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML Text

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/MS-RL

Permissions

  • Change license from the text The text says: "If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license." Replacing the license of the work, or of an adaptation, with another license, or changing its terms.
  • Charge distribution fee from the text Charging a fee for the act of providing a copy of the work to someone else.
  • 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.
  • Derivative works from the text Distributing an adaptation of the work and making it available to the public.
  • 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.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
    • Share alike from the text Adaptations have to be licensed under the same license or one the license names as compatible.
    • Source code from the text Providing access to the source code of the work with every copy distributed.
  • Display from the text Showing the work to the public without making a copy the viewer keeps.
  • Distribute from the text Providing copies of the work to the public or to anyone else.

    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.
  • Modified works from the text Distributing a modified version of the work that does not amount to a new, derivative work.
  • 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.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
    • Share alike from the text Adaptations have to be licensed under the same license or one the license names as compatible.
    • Source code from the text Providing access to the source code of the work with every copy distributed.
  • Patent grant from the text Granting a license under the patent claims that a contributor holds and that the contribution necessarily infringes.
  • Present from the text Performing the work in public, including by broadcast or other communication to the public.
  • Reproduce from the text Making copies of the work in any form.

Prohibitions

  • Promote from the text Not permitted: Promote. The text says: "(B) No Trademark License- This license does not grant you rights to use any contributors’ name, logo, or trademarks." Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.

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.
Compatible license test
a licence that complies with this licence

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

(F) The software is licensed "as-is." You bear the risk of using it. The contributors give no express warranties, guarantees, or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under your local laws which this license cannot change. To the extent permitted under your local laws, the contributors exclude the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

Additional clauses

(B) Patent Grant- Subject to the terms of this license, including the license conditions and limitations in section 3, each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under its licensed patents to make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, import, and/or otherwise dispose of its contribution in the software or derivative works of the contribution in the software.

Info

Target asset types
Software
Region / jurisdiction
Worldwide
Validity
Perpetual
Source
https://opensource.org/license/MS-RL
Legal code
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/licenses.mspx
This description is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher
Microsoft
SPDX identifier
MS-RL on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier
MS-RL

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/MS-RL",
  "license-title": "Microsoft Reciprocal License",
  "spdx-id": "MS-RL",
  "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/MS-RL> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

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

HTML attribution 

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MS-RL" rel="license">Microsoft Reciprocal License</a>.</p>

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

Badge DALICC badge for Microsoft Reciprocal License

Markdown 

[![License: Microsoft Reciprocal License](https://dalicc.net/license-library/MS-RL/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/MS-RL)

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/MS-RL"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/MS-RL/badge.svg" alt="License: Microsoft Reciprocal License"></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
10 recorded, 4 applied to the record, 0 proposed

Models the Microsoft Reciprocal License, which is the Microsoft Public License plus file-level reciprocity. The record copies MicrosoftPublicLicense and adds cc:SourceCode, cc:ShareAlike, dalicc:patentGrant and dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination. A reader should know that the reciprocity is per file, not per work: files that are entirely your own work stay yours.

10 findings

  • info Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId none

    File name, license id, SPDX id and IRI agree. dct:publisher is 'Microsoft'; the sibling record MicrosoftPublicLicense carries dct:publisher "N.N.", which looks like a placeholder and is reported rather than changed.

  • info Rubric 2 odrl:target none

    dcmitype:Software only, following MicrosoftPublicLicense: the text speaks of 'the accompanying software' throughout.

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    Section 2(A) grants 'a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce its contribution, prepare derivative works of its contribution, and distribute its contribution or any derivative works that you create', and 2(B) grants a patent licence. The record therefore adds dalicc:patentGrant to the permission set of MicrosoftPublicLicense and keeps reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee.

  • major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

    dalicc:promote for 3(B) ('This license does not grant you rights to use any contributors' name, logo, or trademarks'), dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination for 3(C), and dalicc:ChangeLicense, which the sibling record permits: 3(E) allows a compiled form under 'a license that complies with this license' but source form only under this licence, and the model cannot hold a share-alike duty and a relicensing permission at once.

  • major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

    cc:ShareAlike is a duty on odrl:modify and odrl:derive, the file-level attachment the conventions prescribe, on the strength of 3(A): 'For any file you distribute that contains code from the software (in source code or binary format), you must provide recipients the source code to that file along with a copy of this license, which license will govern that file. You may license other files that are entirely your own work and do not contain code from the software under any terms you choose.' cc:SourceCode hangs off distribute, modify and derive; cc:Attribution and cc:Notice keep the sibling's placement for 3(D).

  • minor Rubric 6 dalicc:additionalClauses applied

    Clause (F) is quoted verbatim into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer. The licence has no separate liability section, so dalicc:LiabilityLimitation is absent, as in the sibling record. The patent grant 2(B) and clauses (A), (B), (C) and (E) are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses.

  • info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

    The text names no legal system and no term: dalicc:worldwide, dalicc:perpetual. Clause (F) mentions 'your local laws' only as a saving provision.

  • gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

    3(E) allows the compiled form under any license 'that complies with this license'. That is a compatibility test, not a free relicensing, and the vocabulary has no term for a compatibility list. Quoted; proposed term: dalicc:compatibleLicenseTest, or the existing dalicc:shareAlikeVersionQualifier used as a literal.

  • info Rubric 9 record none

    The consistency check of app.services.composer, run with the 39 axioms of licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_default.ttl, returned no conflicts.

  • info Rubric 10 record none

    Against MicrosoftPublicLicense the record adds dalicc:patentGrant, cc:SourceCode, cc:ShareAlike, dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination and the ChangeLicense prohibition, and drops the ChangeLicense permission. The warranty text is identical in the two licences, and the two records quote it identically.

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.

  1. 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 JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

    3 changes

    • changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense

      was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license."

    • changed prohibition dalicc:promote

      was prohibition dalicc:promote

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "(B) No Trademark License- This license does not grant you rights to use any contributors’ name, logo, or trademarks."

    • 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.

  2. Version 1

    Created from the license text on 2026-09-15 (Reciprocal and source-available).

    View JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

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.