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2026

Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2

Also known as Mulan PSL v2, Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2, MulanPSL-2.0.

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/MulanPSL-2.0

Permissions

  • Change license by library convention Library convention: family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing. Replacing the license of the work, or of an adaptation, with another license, or changing its terms.

    Duties

    • Use a compliant license by library convention Library convention: family rule 15: Permissive records permit relicensing. Choosing a replacement license that stays compliant with the terms of the original license.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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: "No trademark license is granted to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of Contributor, except as required to fulfill notice requirements in section 4." 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.

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

THE SOFTWARE AND CONTRIBUTION IN IT ARE PROVIDED WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.

Limitation of liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL ANY CONTRIBUTOR OR COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY DIRECT, OR INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE OR THE CONTRIBUTION IN IT, NO MATTER HOW IT’S CAUSED OR BASED ON WHICH LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Additional clauses

Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable (except for revocation under this Section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer for sale, sell, import or otherwise transfer its Contribution, where such patent license is only limited to the patent claims owned or controlled by such Contributor now or in future which will be necessarily infringed by its Contribution alone, or by combination of the Contribution with the Software to which the Contribution was contributed. The patent license shall not apply to any modification of the Contribution, and any other combination which includes the Contribution. If you or your Affiliates directly or indirectly institute patent litigation (including a cross claim or counterclaim in a litigation) or other patent enforcement activities against any individual or entity by alleging that the Software or any Contribution in it infringes patents, then any patent license granted to you under this License for the Software shall terminate as of the date such litigation or activity is filed or taken. No trademark license is granted to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of Contributor, except as required to fulfill notice requirements in section 4. THIS LICENSE IS WRITTEN IN BOTH CHINESE AND ENGLISH, AND THE CHINESE VERSION AND ENGLISH VERSION SHALL HAVE THE SAME LEGAL EFFECT. IN THE CASE OF DIVERGENCE BETWEEN THE CHINESE AND ENGLISH VERSIONS, THE CHINESE VERSION SHALL PREVAIL.

Info

Target asset types
Software
Region / jurisdiction
Worldwide
Validity
Perpetual
Source
https://spdx.org/licenses/MulanPSL-2.0.html
Legal code
https://license.coscl.org.cn/MulanPSL2
This description is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
SPDX identifier
MulanPSL-2.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier
MulanPSL-2.0

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/MulanPSL-2.0",
  "license-title": "Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2",
  "spdx-id": "MulanPSL-2.0",
  "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/MulanPSL-2.0> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MulanPSL-2.0"
  }
}

HTML attribution 

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/MulanPSL-2.0" rel="license">Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2</a>.</p>

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

Badge DALICC badge for Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2

Markdown 

[![License: Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2](https://dalicc.net/license-library/MulanPSL-2.0/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/MulanPSL-2.0)

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/MulanPSL-2.0"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/MulanPSL-2.0/badge.svg" alt="License: Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 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
10 recorded, 8 applied to the record, 0 proposed

The record models version 2 of the Mulan Permissive Software License, published in Chinese and English with the Chinese version prevailing. It grants a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable copyright license and a matching patent license, grants no trademark license, and requires every redistribution to carry a copy of the license and to retain the copyright, patent, trademark and disclaimer statements. A patent action against the software ends the patent license.

10 findings

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    The copyright grant reads: "each Contributor hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, use, modify, or distribute its Contribution, with modification or not." The record permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee. The patent section grants a patent license expressly, so dalicc:patentGrant is a permission.

  • major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

    The distribution restriction reads: "You may distribute the Software in any medium with or without modification, whether in source or executable forms, provided that you provide recipients with a copy of this License and retain copyright, patent, trademark and disclaimer statements in the Software." cc:Attribution and cc:Notice on distribute, modify and derive.

  • major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

    The patent section continues: "If you or your Affiliates directly or indirectly institute patent litigation (including a cross claim or counterclaim in a litigation) or other patent enforcement activities against any individual or entity by alleging that the Software or any Contribution in it infringes patents, then any patent license granted to you under this License for the Software shall terminate as of the date such litigation or activity is filed or taken." dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination is modelled as a prohibition, the reading the review gave the term: the licensee may not sue and keep the grant. The clause is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses so the mechanism stays readable.

  • major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

    The trademark section reads: "No trademark license is granted to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of Contributor, except as required to fulfill notice requirements in section 4." That is dalicc:promote as a prohibition, the way the library expresses a no-trademark clause. dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited because the text requires the license itself to travel with every copy, which is the reading IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause take of the same clause. The MIT record does not carry the prohibition although its text has the same requirement, so the library is not uniform here. (Corrected on 2026-09-15 by the verification of this review group: see the rubric 3 finding on relicensing below.)

  • minor Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer applied

    Section 5 carries the warranty disclaimer and the liability limitation in one paragraph; each sentence is quoted into its own field. The typographic apostrophe in the liability sentence is the one in the published text.

  • major Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction applied

    The license is published in Chinese and English, and section 6 says that in case of divergence the Chinese version prevails. cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide, because the grant itself is expressly worldwide and no legal system is chosen for it, and the language clause is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. The record quotes the English text, which the license declares to have the same legal effect.

  • info Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

    One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following MIT. The text licenses a program and its related documents.

  • info Rubric 9 record none

    The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts.

  • info Rubric 10 record none

    The closest existing record is Apache-2.0, which has the same three elements: a copyright grant, an express patent grant with retaliation, and a no-trademark clause. Mulan PSL v2 is much shorter and has no notice file and no state-changes duty.

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    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: "Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, use, modify, or distribute its Contribution, with modification or not." The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.

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.

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    3 changes

    • 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.

    • changed prohibition dalicc:promote

      was prohibition dalicc:promote

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "No trademark license is granted to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of Contributor, except as required to fulfill notice requirements in section 4."

    • 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 (Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like).

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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.