{"id":"Fair","title":"Fair License","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/Fair.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The record models the Fair License, whose whole grant is one sentence: usage of the works is permitted as long as the license itself stays with them. The record reads that as the full permissive set, which is how the license is approved and used, with cc:Notice as the only duty and no attribution duty, because the text asks for the instrument and not for a credit.","findings":[{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The whole grant reads: \"Usage of the works is permitted provided that this instrument is retained with the works, so that any entity that uses the works is notified of this instrument.\" The record reads usage as the full permissive set (reproduce, distribute, modify, derive, display, present, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee), which is the reading under which the license was approved as an open source license. A narrower reading, in which only use is granted, would make the record incomparable with every other permissive license in the library.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Notice on distribute, modify and derive: the instrument must be retained with the works. There is no cc:Attribution duty, because the text asks for the license text and not for a credit to the author, which is the one place where this license differs from the ISC form.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited because the text requires the license itself to travel with every copy, which is the reading IscLicense and BSD-3-Clause take of the same clause. The MIT record does not carry the prohibition although its text has the same requirement, so the library is not uniform here. (Corrected on 2026-09-15 by the verification pass: see the rubric 3 finding on relicensing below.)","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The disclaimer is one line, \"DISCLAIMER: THE WORKS ARE WITHOUT WARRANTY.\", quoted verbatim. There is no liability clause.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"The text names no legal system and no term, so cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"One odrl:AssetCollection of dct:type dcmitype:Software, following MIT. The text says works rather than software. The SPDX kind is software and the license is used for software, so the target follows MIT; a reader who wants to license a text or a dataset with it should read the grant again.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check with the axioms of dg_default returned no conflicts.","action":"none"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"cc:legalcode","description":"fairlicense.org no longer resolves, so cc:legalcode points at the archived copy SPDX lists as the official URL, and dct:source at the SPDX page the text was taken from.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Library convention 15: a licence that asks for no reciprocity and no source code asks only that the notice travels with the copy, which is a duty on the acts it governs and not a bar on putting the copy under other terms. dalicc:ChangeLicense is therefore a permission here, and the prohibition the earlier reading wrote is removed. The text reads: \"Usage of the works is permitted provided that this instrument is retained with the works, so that any entity that uses the works is notified of this instrument.\" The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Permissive: MIT, ISC and BSD-like","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text. The license is 245 characters long, which makes every reading of it an interpretation; the rubric 3 finding says which one the record takes."}