{"id":"AFL-2.1","title":"Academic Free License v2.1","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"http://opensource.linux-mirror.org/licenses/afl-2.1.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 2.1 narrows the patent retaliation clause of version 2.0. 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-2.1 is AFL-2.0 with a narrower section 10 and an appendix, not part of the licence, that compares the AFL with the BSD, MIT, NCSA and Apache licences. The two records differ only in the quoted section 10.","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 appendix after the line \"END OF ACADEMIC FREE LICENSE\" is explanatory and is not quoted in the record."}