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2026

NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3

Also known as NASA Open Source Agreement, NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3, NASA-1.3, NOSA, NOSA 1.3.

Commercial use
allowed
Share alike
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/NASA-1.3

Permissions

  • 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

    • Add statement from the text Attaching terms, notices or statements of one's own to the work or to one's modifications when passing it on.
    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Include notice file from the text The text says: "In fulfillment of these requirements, Contributor must include a file (e.g., a change log file) that describes the alterations made and the date of the alterations, identifies Contributor as originator of the alterations, and consents to characterization of the alterations as a Modification, for example, by including a statement that the Modification is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Software provided by Government Agency." Carrying a named notice file of the original work into every redistributed copy and every derivative work.
    • Modification notice from the text The text says: "In fulfillment of these requirements, Contributor must include a file (e.g., a change log file) that describes the alterations made and the date of the alterations, identifies Contributor as originator of the alterations, and consents to characterization of the alterations as a Modification, for example, by including a statement that the Modification is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Software provided by Government Agency." 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.
  • 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

    • Add statement from the text Attaching terms, notices or statements of one's own to the work or to one's modifications when passing it on.
    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Export control notice from the text Complying with the export and import laws that reach the work, and passing the notice of them on to every recipient.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
    • Recipient registration request from the text Asking, without requiring, that a recipient register as a user of the work and report the modifications they make to it, so that the steward can keep a record.
    • 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

    • Add statement from the text Attaching terms, notices or statements of one's own to the work or to one's modifications when passing it on.
    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Include notice file from the text The text says: "In fulfillment of these requirements, Contributor must include a file (e.g., a change log file) that describes the alterations made and the date of the alterations, identifies Contributor as originator of the alterations, and consents to characterization of the alterations as a Modification, for example, by including a statement that the Modification is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Software provided by Government Agency." Carrying a named notice file of the original work into every redistributed copy and every derivative work.
    • Modification notice from the text The text says: "In fulfillment of these requirements, Contributor must include a file (e.g., a change log file) that describes the alterations made and the date of the alterations, identifies Contributor as originator of the alterations, and consents to characterization of the alterations as a Modification, for example, by including a statement that the Modification is derived, directly or indirectly, from Original Software provided by Government Agency." 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.
  • 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

  • Change license from the text Not permitted: Change license. Replacing the license of the work, or of an adaptation, with another license, or changing its terms.
  • Promote from the text Not permitted: Promote. The text says: "E. A Recipient may not make any representation in the Subject Software or in any promotional, advertising or other material that may be construed as an endorsement by Government Agency or by any prior Recipient of any product or service provided by Recipient, or that may seek to obtain commercial advantage by the fact of Government Agency's or a prior Recipient's participation in this Agreement." Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.

License-wide duties

  • Share alike from the text The text says: "A. Distribution or Redistribution of the Subject Software must be made under this Agreement except for additions covered under paragraph 3H." Adaptations have to be licensed under the same license or one the license names as compatible.

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.

Cure period
30 days
Governing law
United States federal law
Terminates on breach
Yes

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

No Warranty: THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE WILL CONFORM TO SPECIFICATIONS, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT, ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE WILL BE ERROR FREE, OR ANY WARRANTY THAT DOCUMENTATION, IF PROVIDED, WILL CONFORM TO THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE. THIS AGREEMENT DOES NOT, IN ANY MANNER, CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSEMENT BY GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR ANY PRIOR RECIPIENT OF ANY RESULTS, RESULTING DESIGNS, HARDWARE, SOFTWARE PRODUCTS OR ANY OTHER APPLICATIONS RESULTING FROM USE OF THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE. FURTHER, GOVERNMENT AGENCY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND LIABILITIES REGARDING THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE, IF PRESENT IN THE ORIGINAL SOFTWARE, AND DISTRIBUTES IT "AS IS."

Limitation of liability

Waiver and Indemnity: RECIPIENT AGREES TO WAIVE ANY AND ALL CLAIMS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, ITS CONTRACTORS AND SUBCONTRACTORS, AS WELL AS ANY PRIOR RECIPIENT. IF RECIPIENT'S USE OF THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE RESULTS IN ANY LIABILITIES, DEMANDS, DAMAGES, EXPENSES OR LOSSES ARISING FROM SUCH USE, INCLUDING ANY DAMAGES FROM PRODUCTS BASED ON, OR RESULTING FROM, RECIPIENT'S USE OF THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE, RECIPIENT SHALL INDEMNIFY AND HOLD HARMLESS THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, ITS CONTRACTORS AND SUBCONTRACTORS, AS WELL AS ANY PRIOR RECIPIENT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. RECIPIENT'S SOLE REMEDY FOR ANY SUCH MATTER SHALL BE THE IMMEDIATE, UNILATERAL TERMINATION OF THIS AGREEMENT.

Accepting warranty or additional liability

A Recipient may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity and/or liability obligations to one or more other Recipients of the Subject Software. A Recipient may do so, however, only on its own behalf and not on behalf of Government Agency or any other Recipient. Such a Recipient must make it absolutely clear that any such warranty, support, indemnity and/or liability obligation is offered by that Recipient alone. Further, such Recipient agrees to indemnify Government Agency and every other Recipient for any liability incurred by them as a result of warranty, support, indemnity and/or liability offered by such Recipient.

Additional clauses

The rights granted in Paragraphs A. and B. allow the Recipient to sublicense those same rights. Such sublicense must be under the same terms and conditions of this Agreement.

Info

Target asset types
Software
Region / jurisdiction
Worldwide
Validity
Perpetual
Source
https://opensource.org/license/NASA-1.3
Legal code
http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensource/nosa/
This description is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
SPDX identifier
NASA-1.3 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier
NASA-1.3

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/NASA-1.3",
  "license-title": "NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3",
  "spdx-id": "NASA-1.3",
  "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/NASA-1.3> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/NASA-1.3"
  }
}

HTML attribution 

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/NASA-1.3" rel="license">NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3</a>.</p>

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

Badge DALICC badge for NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3

Markdown 

[![License: NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3](https://dalicc.net/license-library/NASA-1.3/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/NASA-1.3)

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/NASA-1.3"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/NASA-1.3/badge.svg" alt="License: NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3"></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
13 recorded, 4 applied to the record, 1 proposed

Models version 1.3 of the NASA Open Source Agreement, a government copyleft that binds redistribution to the agreement itself and asks recipients to register. The record follows GPL-2.0-only for the license-wide share-alike duty and Apache-2.0 for the acceptance-of-warranty clause. The text is a template with blanks for the agency and the copyright notice, so no publisher is recorded.

13 findings

  • info Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId none

    File name, license id, SPDX id and IRI agree. cc:legalcode is the agency URL named first in the SPDX seeAlso list and dct:source the OSI page. dct:publisher is left out: the text says 'Government Agency' and leaves the name blank.

  • info Rubric 2 odrl:target none

    dcmitype:Software only: the agreement licenses 'Subject Software' and its documentation.

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    The grant of rights lists, under non-patent rights, 'Use, Distribution, Reproduction, Modification, Redistribution, Display' and, under patent rights, 'Use, Distribution, Reproduction, Sale, Offer for Sale'. The record therefore carries reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works, dalicc:patentGrant and dalicc:chargeDistributionFee, the last because Sale and Offer for Sale are expressly granted.

  • major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

    dalicc:promote for clause 3.E: 'A Recipient may not make any representation in the Subject Software or in any promotional, advertising or other material that may be construed as an endorsement by Government Agency'. dalicc:ChangeLicense for clause 3.A. The agreement has no patent retaliation clause, so no such prohibition is written.

  • major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

    cc:ShareAlike is license-wide: 'Distribution or Redistribution of the Subject Software must be made under this Agreement except for additions covered under paragraph 3H.' cc:SourceCode hangs off distribute for 3.A.2; cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:addStatement (the prescribed copyright notice of 3.B) hang off distribute, modify and derive; dalicc:modificationNotice and dalicc:includeNoticeFile ('Contributor must include a file (e.g., a change log file) that describes the alterations made and the date of the alterations') are on modify and derive.

  • minor Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance applied

    Clause 4.A is quoted into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer, 4.B into dalicc:LiabilityLimitation and 3.H into dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance. Seven clauses are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, among them the sublicensing clause 3.D, the registration request 3.F, the Larger Work clause 3.I, the export-control notice 3.J, the termination clause and the applicable law clause.

  • gap Rubric 8 odrl:permission proposed

    Clause 3.D expressly allows sublicensing on the same terms: 'The rights granted in Paragraphs A. and B. allow the Recipient to sublicense those same rights. Such sublicense must be under the same terms and conditions of this Agreement.' The record does not carry odrl:grantUse, because the composer reports a share-alike duty together with a grant-use permission as a direct conflict. That rule is too wide: sublicensing under the same terms is exactly what a share-alike condition asks for. Proposed for the consolidation: narrow the rule so it fires only when the outgoing licence may differ, and then add odrl:grantUse here.

  • gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

    Clause 3.F asks every recipient to register with the agency and to report how a modification can be reached. There is no term for a reporting or registration request, and it is a request rather than an obligation. Quoted; proposed term: dalicc:recipientRegistrationRequest.

  • gap Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

    The grant itself is worldwide, so cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide; only the governing law is national. The vocabulary has no property for a governing law that is separate from the territory of the grant, so the clause is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. Proposed term: dalicc:governingLaw. Text: 'This Agreement shall be subject to United States federal law only for all purposes, including, but not limited to, determining the validity of this Agreement, the meaning of its provisions and the rights, obligations and remedies of the parties.' (clause 5.C)

  • gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

    Automatic termination on breach has no property that a record can carry: dalicc:terminationOnBreach is a policy quality with no predicate. The clause is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. Proposed term: dalicc:terminatesOnBreach as a boolean property on odrl:Set, with the cure period as a literal. Text: 'This Agreement and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically if a Recipient fails to comply with these terms and conditions, and fails to cure such noncompliance within thirty (30) days of becoming aware of such noncompliance.' (clause 5.A)

  • gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

    Clause 3.J is an export-control notice. No term exists; quoted. Proposed term: dalicc:exportControlNotice, the same term the RPL records need.

  • 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

    The closest siblings in the library are GPL-2.0-only for the reciprocity and Apache-2.0 for the acceptance clause. What sets NASA-1.3 apart is the government-specific waiver and indemnity in place of an ordinary liability limitation, and the registration request, neither of which any other record carries.

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

    5 changes

    • changed duty cc:ShareAlike

      was duty cc:ShareAlike

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "A. Distribution or Redistribution of the Subject Software must be made under this Agreement except for additions covered under paragraph 3H."

    • changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement, dalicc:includeNoticeFile, dalicc:modificationNotice]

      was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement, dalicc:includeNoticeFile, dalicc:modificationNotice]

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on; the record carries it as dalicc:evidence.

    • changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement, dalicc:includeNoticeFile, dalicc:modificationNotice]

      was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement, dalicc:includeNoticeFile, dalicc:modificationNotice]

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on; the record carries it as dalicc:evidence.

    • changed prohibition dalicc:promote

      was prohibition dalicc:promote

      Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "E. A Recipient may not make any representation in the Subject Software or in any promotional, advertising or other material that may be construed as an endorsement by Government Agency or by any prior Recipient of any product or service provided by Recipient, or that may seek to obtain commercial advantage by the fact of Government Agency's or a prior Recipient's participation in this Agreement."

    • 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.