{"id":"AFL-2.0","title":"Academic Free License v2.0","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"http://wayback.archive.org/web/20060924134533/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/afl-2.0.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The Academic Free License rewritten as fifteen numbered sections, the form AFL-3.0 still has. The grant is permissive and sublicenseable, with an express patent licence, an attribution condition on derivative works, a patent retaliation clause and a forum clause. The record follows AFL-3.0. Version 2.0 is the first AFL that is sublicenseable and the first with numbered sections. Nothing here is legal advice.","findings":[{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Software alone, the type 32 of the library's software records carry, among them MIT, BSD-3-Clause, GPL-3.0-only and the sibling OSL-3.0. These texts license an \"original work of authorship\", which would also fit dalicc:CreativeWork, the type the AFL-3.0 record carries beside Software and Dataset; the review group keeps the narrower reading its review plan prescribes, so that all nine records of the family answer alike and the association can widen them in one pass.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Section 1 grants a \"world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license\" to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute to the public, perform publicly and display publicly, so dalicc:sublicense is a permission; section 2 grants a patent licence \"to make, use, sell and offer for sale the Original Work and Derivative Works\", so dalicc:patentGrant is a permission and dalicc:chargeLicenseFee follows the right to sell.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Section 4 bars the use of the names and marks of the Licensor and of any contributor \"to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work\", which is dalicc:promote, and states that no right is granted to the trademarks of Licensor. Section 10 ends the licence on a patent action, which is dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"Section 6, Attribution Rights, requires the notices of the Original Work to be retained in the Source Code of any Derivative Work and a prominent Attribution Notice to say that You modified it, so cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:modificationNotice hang on odrl:modify and odrl:derive. cc:SourceCode hangs on odrl:distribute, following AFL-3.0; section 3 is drafted as an undertaking of the Licensor.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Sections 7 and 8 are quoted into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and dalicc:LiabilityLimitation. dalicc:additionalClauses carries sections 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 15 and the notice that the licence text may not be modified.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"Section 11 does not name a legal system: it points at \"the courts of a jurisdiction wherein the Licensor resides or in which Licensor conducts its primary business\". cc:jurisdiction therefore stays dalicc:worldwide and the clause is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, the choice OLFL-1.3 and OSC-1.0 already use for a governing-law clause.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Two clauses have no term. Section 9 requires a distributor to make a reasonable effort to obtain the express assent of recipients; proposed term dalicc:recipientAssent. The automatic termination of the licence has no property; proposed term dalicc:terminatesOnBreach. Both are quoted instead.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check of app.services.composer with the axioms of dg_default returned an empty list for this record.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"family","description":"AFL-2.0 and AFL-2.1 carry the same model. The only operative difference is section 10: version 2.0 ends the licence on an action \"(i) against Licensor with respect to a patent applicable to software or (ii) against any entity with respect to a patent applicable to the Original Work\", version 2.1 narrows it to an action \"against Licensor or any licensee alleging that the Original Work infringes a patent\". Both clauses are quoted in their own records.","action":"none"}],"family":"Academic Free and Open Software","port_of":null,"variant_kind":"version","notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text and checked against the URL in cc:legalcode. The source text prints the section sign of \"17 U.S.C. 101 et seq.\" as a currency sign, a transcoding artefact of the published file; the quoted clause in this record carries the section sign that the official text uses."}