{"id":"OGL-UK-2.0","title":"Open Government Licence v2.0","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://spdx.org/licenses/OGL-UK-2.0.html","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"Version 2.0 of the UK Open Government Licence, modelled on the existing version 3.0 record (UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation). A worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual licence to copy, publish, distribute, transmit, adapt and commercially exploit public sector information, conditional on acknowledging the source and linking to the licence. What a reader should know: the Exemptions section takes personal data, insignia and third party rights out of the grant, which the record carries as a dalicc:exemptedMaterial prohibition, and the licence grants the database right as well as copyright.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carries the SPDX id OGL-UK-2.0, the SPDX name as dct:title and the short forms as dct:alternative. dalicc:variantKind is \"version\", because the library already holds version 3.0 of this licence as UkOpenGovernmentLicenseForPublicSectorInformation.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:target","description":"Three asset types, dalicc:CreativeWork, dcmitype:Dataset and dcmitype:Software, exactly as on the version 3.0 record, because the definition of Information names all three: \"information protected by copyright or by database right (for example, literary and artistic works, content, data and source code) offered for use under the terms of this licence\".","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant is \"a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information\", and the list under \"You are free to\" names copying, publishing, distributing, transmitting, adapting and exploiting the Information commercially. The record therefore permits reproduce, distribute, display, present, modify, derive, commercial use, derivative works, modified works and the distribution fee. dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights is permitted because the licence covers \"copyright and database right material\" in as many words, which is the first record in the library to state the database right as a grant rather than leave it implicit in the dataset target.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Two prohibitions. dalicc:promote carries the non-endorsement condition, \"ensure that you do not use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider endorses you or your use of the Information\", which version 2.0 sets out under its own Non-endorsement heading. dalicc:exemptedMaterial carries the Exemptions section, which takes personal data, unpublished information, logos, crests, the Royal Arms, military insignia, third party rights, other intellectual property rights and identity documents out of the licence altogether. Both lists are quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. The version 3.0 record prohibits cc:ShareAlike and dalicc:addStatement as well; neither is supported by the text of version 2.0, which in fact prescribes an attribution statement, so neither was written here.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"The condition is one sentence, \"You must, where you do any of the above\", so the same three duties hang off odrl:distribute, odrl:modify and odrl:derive: cc:Attribution and cc:Notice for \"acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence\", and dalicc:addStatement for the wording the licence prescribes where the Information Provider specifies none, \"Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0.\" The duty not to mislead is quoted rather than modelled.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The no warranty paragraph goes into dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and the paragraph that follows it into dalicc:LiabilityLimitation. The existing version 3.0 record keeps both paragraphs in dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and carries no dalicc:LiabilityLimitation; this record splits them, as the other records of this addition do. dalicc:additionalClauses carries the grant, the fair dealing sentence, the freedoms, the conditions, the termination sentence, the exemptions, the governing law clause, the definition of Information and the interoperability statement.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"major","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide, which the grant states in as many words. The governing law clause names no country either: \"This licence is governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Information Provider has its principal place of business, unless otherwise specified by the Information Provider.\" It is quoted in dalicc:additionalClauses. dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual, again from the grant.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"\"These are important conditions of this licence and if you fail to comply with them the rights granted to you under this licence, or any similar licence granted by the Licensor, will end automatically.\" Automatic termination has no property a record can carry; quoted, with dalicc:terminatesOnBreach proposed.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The compatibility statement of the About section (interoperable with the Creative Commons Attribution Licence and the Open Data Commons Attribution License) is not an operative clause but it is what a user compares licences for. No term expresses it; proposed term dalicc:compatibleLicenseTest, quoted for now.","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 conflict list.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"Family: the two OGL records of this review group and the existing version 3.0 record share one model. Version 1.0 differs from 2.0 in three quoted places only: version 2.0 pulls the non-endorsement condition out into its own section, says \"commercially and non-commercially\" where 1.0 says \"commercially\", and drops the reference to the Data Protection Act 1998 that 1.0 lists among its conditions. Version 3.0 adds the Information Provider's right to require the attribution to be removed. The NCGL-UK-2.0 record in the library is the non-commercial edition of the same text and prohibits cc:CommercialUse, which these records permit.","action":"none"},{"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: \"The Licensor grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below.\" The permission carries the dalicc:compliantLicense duty, as Apache-2.0 does, because the notice has to survive the relicensing.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Open Government Licence","port_of":null,"variant_kind":"version","notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text. cc:legalcode points at the licence on The National Archives site, dct:source at the SPDX page the text was taken from. No long dash appears in the source text; the typographic quotation marks of the original are reproduced as they stand."}