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2026

The Unlicense

Also known as The Unlicense, Unlicense.

Commercial use
allowed
Share alike
not required
Attribution
not required
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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/Unlicense

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.
  • Charge distribution fee from the text Charging a fee for the act of providing a copy of the work to someone else.
  • Charge license fee from the text Charging a fee for granting someone a license to the work.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Grant use from the text Granting third parties the right to use the work.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Sublicense from the text Granting a third party rights in the work under a license of the licensee's own, rather than passing on the original license.

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) Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.

    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

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

Limitation of liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Additional clauses

In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this software under copyright law.

Info

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

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/Unlicense",
  "license-title": "The Unlicense",
  "spdx-id": "Unlicense",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle 

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/Unlicense> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

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

This license carries no attribution duty, so no credit line is offered here.

Badge DALICC badge for The Unlicense

Markdown 

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

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/Unlicense"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/Unlicense/badge.svg" alt="License: The Unlicense"></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
8 recorded, 5 applied to the record, 0 proposed

The record models the Unlicense, a dedication of the software to the public domain with a permissive fallback. It follows Cc010Universal: every act is permitted, nothing is prohibited and no duty is attached, with the dedication paragraph quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. Unlike Cc010Universal it carries no dalicc:promote prohibition, because the text says nothing about trademarks.

8 findings

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    The grant reads: "Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means." The record permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, grantUse, sublicense, change of license, commercial use, derivative works, modified works, the distribution fee and the license fee. Sublicensing and relicensing follow from a dedication that keeps nothing back, and sell supports both fee terms.

  • major Rubric 5 odrl:duty applied

    No duties, and no prohibitions. This and MIT-0 are the two records of the review group that impose nothing at all on the licensee.

  • minor Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition applied

    Cc010Universal prohibits dalicc:promote because CC0 states that no trademark or patent rights are waived. The Unlicense has no such sentence, so the prohibition is not written here. This is the one deontic difference between the two dedications in the library.

  • minor Rubric 6 dalicc:additionalClauses applied

    The dedication paragraph is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, because the relinquishment of copyright in perpetuity is the substance of the license and no deontic term expresses it. Cc010Universal quotes its fallback license the same way.

  • info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

    The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual. The dedication is expressly for jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, with a license as fallback, which the quoted clause carries.

  • info Rubric 2 odrl:target applied

    One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following Cc010Universal. The text licenses software in source or binary form.

  • info Rubric 9 record none

    The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts. No share-alike duty is present, so permitting dalicc:ChangeLicense raises no conflict.

  • info Rubric 10 record none

    Read against Cc010Universal: the same open model, one prohibition fewer, and a software target instead of a creative-work and dataset target.

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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    2 changes

    • changed permission dalicc:ChangeLicense

      was permission dalicc:ChangeLicense

      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.

    • 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.