{"id":"AFL-3.0","title":"Academic Free License 3.0","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/AFL-3.0.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The Academic Free License is the permissive twin of the Open Software License: same structure, same author, but clause 1(c) lets the licensee distribute under any license of their choice as long as it does not contradict this one. That right was not modelled and has been added. The share-alike prohibition the template contributes contradicts the same clause.","findings":[{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Clause 1(c) grants the right \"to distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work and Derivative Works to the public, under any license of your choice that does not contradict the terms and conditions ... in this Academic Free License\". That is exactly dalicc:ChangeLicense with a dalicc:compliantLicense duty, the pattern Apache-2.0 and the Common Development and Distribution License use. Added.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:ChangeLicense ;\n        odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                odrl:action dalicc:compliantLicense ] ] ;\n"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"cc:ShareAlike is prohibited, which asserts that the licensee may not redistribute under this same license. Clause 1(c) says \"any license of your choice\", which includes this one. Removing it is the right answer but it belongs with the library-wide decision on the eight template records, so it is proposed rather than applied.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"# remove\nodrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action cc:ShareAlike ] ;\n"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:addStatement is prohibited, which contradicts clause 1(c) as well.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"# remove\nodrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:addStatement ] ;\n"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"vocabulary","description":"Clause 2 grants a patent license, clause 10 terminates the whole license on patent action, and clause 5 treats \"External Deployment\", that is making the work usable over a network, as a distribution. None of the three has a term. Proposed: dalicc:patentGrant, dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination, dalicc:networkUseTrigger.","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The stored disclaimer is clause 8, the limitation of liability, not clause 7, the warranty of provenance and disclaimer of warranty. The record has no dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, so the two clauses are conflated.","action":"proposed","change":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer \"Licensor warrants that the copyright in and to the Original Work ... the Original Work is provided under this License on an \\\"AS IS\\\" BASIS and WITHOUT WARRANTY ...\" ;\ndalicc:LiabilityLimitation \"Under no circumstances and under no legal theory ...\" ;\n"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"family","description":"AFL-3.0 and OSL-3.0 are the same document with one clause changed: 1(c) says \"any license of your choice\" in AFL and \"shall be licensed under this Open Software License\" in OSL. After the review the two records differ in exactly that place, which is the intended shape.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"major","field":"record","description":"Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency and consolidation decision 4: the record prohibited cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement without support, permitted dalicc:noWarrantyNotice although no clause of the AFL grants such a right, kept the limitation of liability inside dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer while section 7, the disclaimer of warranty, was absent, made no patent statement although section 2 grants one and section 10 ends it on patent litigation, and carried the placeholder '- not specified - '.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Other OSI approved licenses (corporate, academic, weak copyleft)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"This record uses the composer template shared by AAL, AFL-3.0, APL-1.0, APSL-2.0, CATOSL-1.1, CECILL-2.1, EPL-1.0 and PHP-3.0: bare odrl:derive and odrl:modify permissions with the real duties hung on cc:DerivativeWorks, plus a fixed block of three prohibitions (cc:ShareAlike, dalicc:addStatement, dalicc:promote). The template fits a permissive license and misdescribes every reciprocal one."}