{"id":"CECILL-B","title":"CeCILL-B Free Software License Agreement","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://spdx.org/licenses/CECILL-B.html","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"CeCILL-B, the permissive agreement of the CeCILL family: broad rights of use, modification and distribution, no reciprocity, and in exchange a four part credit duty that follows every Modified Software. The record follows the existing CeCILL 2.1 record for its metadata and the MPL family of this review for the shape of its duties. What a reader should know: the patent statement of Article 5 is a covenant not to enforce, modelled as dalicc:patentGrant and quoted, and the agreement is governed by French law while the grant itself is not limited to France.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carries the SPDX id CECILL-B, the SPDX name as dct:title and the family spellings as dct:alternative. dalicc:variantKind is \"edition\": CeCILL-B and CeCILL-C are not versions of the CeCILL agreement the library holds as CeaCnrsInriaLogicielLibreLicenseVersion21 but two sibling agreements published beside it, with their own reciprocity.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, as on the existing CeaCnrsInriaLogicielLibreLicenseVersion21 record. The agreement defines the Software as its object throughout and names no other kind of material.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Article 5 grants the right of use (\"permanent or temporary reproduction of all or part of the Software by any or all means and in any or all form\", loading, displaying, running and storing it), the right to make Contributions and the right of distribution, which \"includes the right to publish, transmit and communicate the Software to the general public on any or all medium, and by any or all means, and the right to market, either in consideration of a fee, or free of charge, one or more copies\". The record therefore permits reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works, the distribution fee and the licence fee. dalicc:patentGrant carries the undertaking in Article 5 not to enforce the Licensor's patents against licensees, which is a covenant not to sue rather than an express grant; the sentence is quoted so the difference stays visible.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"No prohibition is written. The agreement has no trademark or endorsement clause: what Article 9.4 says about the name of the Software is a disclaimer of warranty and liability, not a bar on use of the name. The existing CeaCnrsInriaLogicielLibreLicenseVersion21 record prohibits dalicc:promote and dalicc:addStatement; neither is supported by the CeCILL-B or CeCILL-C text, and dalicc:addStatement is in fact required by Article 5.3.4 of CeCILL-B. That record was not edited; the divergence is reported.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"Articles 9.3 and 9.4 are quoted in dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and Article 8 in dalicc:LiabilityLimitation. Article 7.2 goes into dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance, because it lets a Licensor offer a warranty of its own under terms it is free to decide. dalicc:additionalClauses carries the purpose, acceptance, term, patent, distribution, intellectual property, termination, language, new versions and governing law articles. Note for the consolidation: the existing CeCILL 2.1 record puts Article 8, the liability article, into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and carries no dalicc:LiabilityLimitation; this record separates the two.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"CeCILL-B is permissive with a strong citation duty, so no cc:ShareAlike is written. odrl:distribute carries cc:Notice and dalicc:noWarrantyNotice from Article 5.3.1, which requires a true copy to be accompanied by \"a copy of the Agreement\" and \"a notice relating to the limitation of both the Licensor's warranty and liability\", and cc:SourceCode from the same article, which requires effective access to the full Source Code where only the Object Code is redistributed. odrl:modify and odrl:derive carry cc:Attribution, cc:Notice, dalicc:modificationNotice (Article 5.2, the author and the date of the Contribution) and dalicc:addStatement, which is the four part credit of Article 5.3.4: the documentation, the interface, a freely accessible website and the best efforts owed when a third party may redistribute without publishing source. dalicc:ChangeLicense is permitted, with cc:Attribution and dalicc:addStatement as its duties, because Article 5.3.2 lets the Modified Software go out \"under a license agreement other than this Agreement subject to compliance with the provisions of Article 5.3.4\".","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"major","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide and Article 13 is quoted instead: \"The Agreement is governed by French law. The Parties agree to endeavor to seek an amicable solution to any disagreements or disputes that may arise during the performance of the Agreement.\" French law governs the contract; the rights granted are not limited to French territory, and Article 11.5 gives the French and English versions equal force. dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual, from Article 4.2: the Agreement \"shall remain in force for the entire legal term of protection of the economic rights over the Software\".","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Article 10.1 terminates the agreement thirty days after an ineffective notice of breach, and Article 10.2 keeps the licences granted before termination alive. Quoted; proposed terms dalicc:terminatesOnBreach and dalicc:sublicenseSurvival.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Article 5.3.5 makes the credits, respectively the notice of rights, optional where the Modified Software contains a contribution under another agreement of the CeCILL family. That conditional relaxation of a duty has no term; the article is quoted. Proposed term dalicc:compatibleLicenseTest, as in another review group.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"info","field":"dalicc:orLaterVersionOption","description":"Article 12.3 lets a licensee use software distributed under a given version of the agreement under any later version. As in the other records of this addition the property was not written outside the GNU family; the triple would be dalicclib:CECILL-B dalicc:orLaterVersionOption true.","action":"proposed"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check of app.services.composer with the axioms of dg_default returned an empty conflict list.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"Family: the record follows the existing CeaCnrsInriaLogicielLibreLicenseVersion21 record for its metadata and its software target and the MPL family of this review for its deontic shape. CeCILL-B and CeCILL-C share every clause outside Article 5.3 and Article 6; what separates them is exactly the reciprocity, which is why the CeCILL-C record carries four cc:ShareAlike duties and the CeCILL-B record carries none and permits dalicc:ChangeLicense instead.","action":"none"}],"family":"CeCILL","port_of":null,"variant_kind":"edition","notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text, which is the official English version of the agreement; Article 11.5 states that the French and English versions have equal force, and cc:legalcode points at the English text on the cecill.info site. No long dash appears in the source text. The existing CeCILL 2.1 record was not edited, although its dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer holds the liability article."}