{"id":"BUSL-1.1","title":"Business Source License 1.1","reviewed_on":"2026-09-22","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/BUSL-1.1.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The record models the Business Source License 1.1 as the template it is. The licence grants copying, modification, derivative works and redistribution but only 'non-production use', and each licensor fills in a Change Date, a Change License and an Additional Use Grant of its own. This is not an open source licence while the grant is in force: production use needs either an Additional Use Grant or a commercial licence bought from the licensor.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"File name, record identifier, SPDX identifier and IRI local name agree. cc:legalcode points at the publisher's own page for the text and dct:source at the SPDX entry. dct:publisher is MariaDB Corporation Ab, which the text names in its copyright line.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Software only, following CAL-1.0 and the other software records: the text speaks of the Licensed Work as software distributed in versions.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant is one sentence: 'The Licensor hereby grants you the right to copy, modify, create derivative works, redistribute, and make non-production use of the Licensed Work.' That gives odrl:reproduce, odrl:modify, odrl:derive, cc:DerivativeWorks, odrl:distribute and dalicc:ModifiedWorks. No display or performance permission: the text does not mention either. No dalicc:patentGrant: the text grants no patent licence.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"minor","field":"cc:CommercialUse","description":"cc:CommercialUse is left unstated. The licence draws its line between production and non-production use, not between commercial and non-commercial use, so a commercial licensee may still use the work outside production. The line is carried by dalicc:fieldOfUseRestriction and by the quoted clause 'you must purchase a commercial license from the Licensor, its affiliated entities, or authorized resellers, or you must refrain from using the Licensed Work'.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:ChangeLicense for 'All copies of the original and modified Licensed Work, and derivative works of the Licensed Work, are subject to this License.' dalicc:promote for 'This License does not grant you any right in any trademark or logo of Licensor or its affiliates'.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Notice for 'You must conspicuously display this License on each original or modified copy of the Licensed Work' and cc:ShareAlike for 'All copies of the original and modified Licensed Work, and derivative works of the Licensed Work, are subject to this License.' Both hang on odrl:distribute, odrl:modify and odrl:derive rather than on the licence as a whole, because the sentence binds copies and derivative works of the Licensed Work and reaches nothing else. The licence requires no source publication, so there is no cc:SourceCode duty.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The disclaimer is quoted verbatim. dalicc:LiabilityLimitation is left out because the text carries no limitation of liability at all, only the warranty disclaimer. Ten further clauses are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses, including the three Covenants of Licensor that tell a licensor what it may fill in.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:validityType","description":"dalicc:validityType stays dalicc:perpetual and cc:jurisdiction dalicc:worldwide. The Change Date is a fact about a project that uses the template, not about the template: 'Effective on the Change Date, or the fourth anniversary of the first publicly available distribution of a specific version of the Licensed Work under this License, whichever comes first, the Licensor hereby grants you rights under the terms of the Change License, and the rights granted in the paragraph above terminate.' That clause is quoted instead of being turned into a date. dalicc:terminatesOnBreach is true for 'Any use of the Licensed Work in violation of this License will automatically terminate your rights under this License'; no cure period is offered.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The change date and the change licence have no term. The clause is quoted. Proposed terms: dalicc:changeDate, a date after which the licence becomes another one, and dalicc:changeLicense, an object property naming the record the licence turns into. The template leaves both blank, so a record for a project that uses it would carry the filled-in values.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The Additional Use Grant has no term: 'The Licensor may make an Additional Use Grant, above, permitting limited production use.' It is the licensor's own text and differs per project. Quoted. Proposed term: dalicc:additionalUseGrant, a literal holding the extra permission a licensor writes into the template.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:fieldOfUseRestriction","description":"'Non-production use' has no action term. dalicc:fieldOfUseRestriction is the nearest literal and carries it, following C-UDA-1.0, which uses the same property for 'Computational Use'. Proposed term: dalicc:productionUse as a rule action, so that a record can prohibit it outright instead of naming it in a literal.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check of app.services.composer, run against licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_default.ttl, returned no conflicts. cc:ShareAlike hangs on three permissions rather than on the licence as a whole, so the rule about a whole-work share-alike duty beside a relicensing permission does not apply, and dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited in any case.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"major","field":"record","description":"Its nearest sibling in the library is C-UDA-1.0, which also prohibits dalicc:ChangeLicense, carries cc:ShareAlike as a duty on the acts that pass the work on, and names its restriction in dalicc:fieldOfUseRestriction. The difference is that C-UDA-1.0 permits cc:CommercialUse and this record leaves it unstated, and that this licence changes into another licence on a date the licensor sets.","action":"none"}],"family":"Source-available licences and riders","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"variant_of":null,"notes":"The record models the template. A project that uses the Business Source License fills in the Licensed Work, the Additional Use Grant, the Change Date and the Change License, and the four Covenants of Licensor limit what those fill-ins may say. The covenants are quoted so that a reader can tell a conforming use of the template from a modified one."}