{"id":"OCLC-2.0","title":"OCLC Research Public License 2.0","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/software/license/v2final.htm","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The OCLC Research Public License is a reciprocal licence for research code: distribution must be under this licence, at no charge beyond the cost of transferring the files, with the warranty disclaimer prominently displayed and a prescribed notice in every source file. The record carries a licence-wide share-alike duty and five prohibitions. Nothing here is legal advice.","findings":[{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Software alone, following EclipsePublicLicense10 and EPL-2.0, the two records of this family already in the library. The text licenses a Program, that is software in source code and object code form, so neither dalicc:CreativeWork nor dcmitype:Dataset is written.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Section 1 grants \"a non-exclusive, worldwide, no-charge, transferable license to execute, prepare derivative works of, and distribute (internally and externally), for commercial and noncommercial purposes, the original code contributed by Original Contributor and all Modifications\". cc:CommercialUse is therefore expressly permitted. dalicc:chargeDistributionFee is permitted because the licence allows the costs of physically transferring the files to be recovered. The word sublicense appears only in section 4, where You grant rights to OCLC, so dalicc:sublicense is not written as a permission of the licensee.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Five. dalicc:ChangeLicense, because \"The distribution of the Program must be under the terms of this license\"; dalicc:chargeLicenseFee, because \"The Program must be distributed without charge beyond the costs of physically transferring the files to the recipient\"; dalicc:addLimitation, because a distribution \"must not put any further restrictions on the recipient's exercise of the rights granted herein\"; dalicc:promote, because \"you may not use any trademark of any of the Contributors without the prior written consent of the relevant Contributor\"; and dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination for section 5, which is wider than a patent clause, since it terminates the licence for any action for intellectual property infringement against a Contributor.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:ShareAlike is licence-wide, from section 2. cc:SourceCode hangs on odrl:distribute, from section 3.C: \"the source code must be included with the object code distribution or the distributor must provide the source code to the recipient upon request\". dalicc:noWarrantyNotice is on odrl:distribute too, because the warranty disclaimer \"must be prominently displayed with every distribution of the Program in any form\". The prescribed notice of section 3.B and the copyright statement of 3.C give dalicc:addStatement, cc:Notice and cc:Attribution on the three acts. There is no requirement to mark changes, so dalicc:modificationNotice is not written.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The warranty and liability paragraph of section 3.A is split at \"IN NO EVENT SHALL\" into the two fields. dalicc:additionalClauses carries sections 3.A, 3.B, 3.C, 3.D, the grant-back of section 4, the termination of section 5 and the whole of section 6.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"Section 6 states that the licence \"shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Ohio and the United States of America\". As everywhere in this review group, cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide and the clause is quoted.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Three gaps, all quoted. Section 4 grants OCLC and other licensees a sublicensable licence over your Modifications; proposed dalicc:contributionGrantBack, the term the EU DataGrid record also needs. Section 6 requires any patent covering the Program to allow free commercial and non-commercial use by any third party; proposed dalicc:patentFreedomCondition. Section 6 also puts export control on the distributor and requires a distributor who learns of a third party claim to redo the Program and inform recipients; no term is proposed for the latter.","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":"OCLC-2.0 belongs to no family in this review group. Its licence-wide cc:ShareAlike duty, its no-charge rule and its further-restrictions bar put it next to SimPL-2.0 and the GNU records rather than next to the Common Public License.","action":"none"}],"family":"Eclipse, Common Public and Lucent","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text of OCLC-2.0 and checked against the OCLC URL in cc:legalcode. The text uses a typographic apostrophe in section 3.A and the quoted clause keeps it."}