Open Government Licence v2.0

Also known as OGL 2.0, OGL-UK-2.0, Open Government Licence v2.0.

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/OGL-UK-2.0

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
- Add statement from the text
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Display from the text
Distribute from the text
Duties
- Add statement from the text
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Extract or reuse a substantial part of a database from the text
Modified works from the text
Modify from the text
Duties
- Add statement from the text
- Attribution from the text
- Notice from the text
Present from the text
Reproduce from the text

Prohibitions

Exempted material from the text
Promote from the text

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.

Compatible license test: interoperable with the Creative Commons Attribution Licence and the Open Data Commons Attribution License
Terminates on breach: Yes

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

Non warranty The Information is licensed ‘as is’ and the Information Provider excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Limitation of liability

The Information Provider is not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. The Information Provider does not guarantee the continued supply of the Information.

Additional clauses

Using Information under this licence Use of copyright and database right material expressly made available under this licence (the ‘Information’) indicates your acceptance of the terms and conditions below. The Licensor grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below. This licence does not affect your freedom under fair dealing or fair use or any other copyright or database right exceptions and limitations. You are free to: copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application. You must, where you do any of the above: acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence; If the Information Provider does not provide a specific attribution statement, or if you are using Information from several Information Providers and multiple attributions are not practical in your product or application, you may use the following: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0. These are important conditions of this licence and if you fail to comply with them the rights granted to you under this licence, or any similar licence granted by the Licensor, will end automatically. personal data in the Information; information that has neither been published nor disclosed under information access legislation (including the Freedom of Information Acts for the UK and Scotland) by or with the consent of the Information Provider; departmental or public sector organisation logos, crests and the Royal Arms except where they form an integral part of a document or dataset; military insignia; third party rights the Information Provider is not authorised to license; other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade marks, and design rights; and identity documents such as the British Passport Non-endorsement This licence does not grant you any right to use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider endorses you or your use of the Information. Governing Law This licence is governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Information Provider has its principal place of business, unless otherwise specified by the Information Provider. ‘Information’ means information protected by copyright or by database right (for example, literary and artistic works, content, data and source code) offered for use under the terms of this licence. This is version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence. The Controller of HMSO may, from time to time, issue new versions of the Open Government Licence. If you are already using Information under a previous version of the Open Government Licence, the terms of that licence will continue to apply. These terms are compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 and the Open Data Commons Attribution License, both of which license copyright and database rights. This means that when the Information is adapted and licensed under either of those licences, you automatically satisfy the conditions of the OGL when you comply with the other licence. The OGLv2.0 is Open Definition compliant.

Info

Target asset types: Creative work (i.e. text, picture, sound, movie), Dataset, Software
Region / jurisdiction: Worldwide
Validity: Perpetual
Source: https://spdx.org/licenses/OGL-UK-2.0.html
Legal code: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/
This description is published under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher: The National Archives
Attribution name: UK Government
SPDX identifier: OGL-UK-2.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier: OGL-UK-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/OGL-UK-2.0",
  "license-title": "Open Government Licence v2.0",
  "spdx-id": "OGL-UK-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/OGL-UK-2.0> .

RDF, JSON-LD

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

HTML attribution

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/OGL-UK-2.0" rel="license">Open Government Licence v2.0</a>.</p>

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

Badge

Markdown

[![License: Open Government Licence v2.0](https://dalicc.net/license-library/OGL-UK-2.0/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/OGL-UK-2.0)

HTML

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/OGL-UK-2.0"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/OGL-UK-2.0/badge.svg" alt="License: Open Government Licence v2.0"></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: 12 recorded, 8 applied to the record, 0 proposed

Version 2.0 of the UK Open Government Licence, modelled on the existing version 3.0 record (UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation). A worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual licence to copy, publish, distribute, transmit, adapt and commercially exploit public sector information, conditional on acknowledging the source and linking to the licence. What a reader should know: the Exemptions section takes personal data, insignia and third party rights out of the grant, which the record carries as a dalicc:exemptedMaterial prohibition, and the licence grants the database right as well as copyright.

12 findings

minor Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

The record carries the SPDX id OGL-UK-2.0, the SPDX name as dct:title and the short forms as dct:alternative. dalicc:variantKind is "version", because the library already holds version 3.0 of this licence as UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation.
major Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

Three asset types, dalicc:CreativeWork, dcmitype:Dataset and dcmitype:Software, exactly as on the version 3.0 record, because the definition of Information names all three: "information protected by copyright or by database right (for example, literary and artistic works, content, data and source code) offered for use under the terms of this licence".
major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

The grant is "a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information", and the list under "You are free to" names copying, publishing, distributing, transmitting, adapting and exploiting the Information commercially. The record therefore permits reproduce, distribute, display, present, modify, derive, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee. dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights is permitted because the licence covers "copyright and database right material" in as many words, which is the first record in the library to state the database right as a grant rather than leave it implicit in the dataset target.
major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

Two prohibitions. dalicc:promote carries the non-endorsement condition, "ensure that you do not use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider endorses you or your use of the Information", which version 2.0 sets out under its own Non-endorsement heading. dalicc:exemptedMaterial carries the Exemptions section, which takes personal data, unpublished information, logos, crests, the Royal Arms, military insignia, third party rights, other intellectual property rights and identity documents out of the licence altogether. Both lists are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. The version 3.0 record prohibits cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement as well; neither is supported by the text of version 2.0, which in fact prescribes an attribution statement, so neither was written here.
major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

The condition is one sentence, "You must, where you do any of the above", so the same three duties hang off odrl:distribute, odrl:modify and odrl:derive: cc:Attribution and cc:Notice for "acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence", and dalicc:addStatement for the wording the licence prescribes where the Information Provider specifies none, "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0." The duty not to mislead is quoted rather than modelled.
minor Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer applied

The no warranty paragraph goes into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and the paragraph that follows it into dalicc:LiabilityLimitation. The existing version 3.0 record keeps both paragraphs in dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and carries no dalicc:LiabilityLimitation; this record splits them, as the other records of this addition do. dalicc:additionalClauses carries the grant, the fair dealing sentence, the freedoms, the conditions, the termination sentence, the exemptions, the governing law clause, the definition of Information and the interoperability statement.
major Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction applied

cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide, which the grant states in as many words. The governing law clause names no country either: "This licence is governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Information Provider has its principal place of business, unless otherwise specified by the Information Provider." It is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual, again from the grant.
gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

"These are important conditions of this licence and if you fail to comply with them the rights granted to you under this licence, or any similar licence granted by the Licensor, will end automatically." Automatic termination has no property a record can carry; quoted, with dalicc:terminatesOnBreach proposed.
gap Rubric 8 dalicc:additionalClauses none

The compatibility statement of the About section (interoperable with the Creative Commons Attribution Licence and the Open Data Commons Attribution License) is not an operative clause but it is what a user compares licences for. No term expresses it; proposed term dalicc:compatibleLicenseTest, quoted for now.
info Rubric 9 record none

The consistency check of app.services.composer with the axioms of dg_default returned an empty conflict list.
info Rubric 10 record none

Family: the two OGL records of this review group and the existing version 3.0 record share one model. Version 1.0 differs from 2.0 in three quoted places only: version 2.0 pulls the non-endorsement condition out into its own section, says "commercially and non-commercially" where 1.0 says "commercially", and drops the reference to the Data Protection Act 1998 that 1.0 lists among its conditions. Version 3.0 adds the Information Provider's right to require the attribution to be removed. The NCGL-UK-2.0 record in the library is the non-commercial edition of the same text and prohibits cc:CommercialUse, which these records permit.
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: "The Licensor grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below." 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.

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
6 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 permission dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights
  
  was permission dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights
  
  Manual edit The statement now quotes the sentence of the licence text it rests on: "Using Information under this licence Use of copyright and database right material expressly made available under this licence (the ‘Information’) indicates your acceptance of the terms and conditions below."
- changed permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement]
  
  was permission odrl:derive with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement]
  
  Manual edit Its duty dalicc:addStatement quotes "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0."
- changed permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement]
  
  was permission odrl:distribute with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement]
  
  Manual edit Its duty dalicc:addStatement quotes "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0."
- changed permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement]
  
  was permission odrl:modify with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:addStatement]
  
  Manual edit Its duty dalicc:addStatement quotes "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0."
- 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

Created from the license text on 2026-09-15 (Open Government Licence).

View version 1 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.