{"id":"OSL-2.0","title":"Open Software License 2.0","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"http://web.archive.org/web/20041020171434/http://www.rosenlaw.com/osl2.0.html","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The Open Software License in the fifteen-section form: a reciprocal licence whose clause 1(c) requires every copy distributed to be licensed under the Open Software License, with an express patent grant, an attribution condition, an external deployment clause and patent retaliation. The record follows OSL-3.0. Version 2.0 is the first sublicenseable OSL. Nothing here is legal advice.","findings":[{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Software alone, the type 32 of the library's software records carry, among them MIT, BSD-3-Clause, GPL-3.0-only and the sibling OSL-3.0. These texts license an \"original work of authorship\", which would also fit dalicc:CreativeWork, the type the AFL-3.0 record carries beside Software and Dataset; the review group keeps the narrower reading its review plan prescribes, so that all nine records of the family answer alike and the association can widen them in one pass.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Section 1 grants a \"world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license\", so dalicc:sublicense is a permission, and section 2 grants a patent licence \"to make, use, sell and offer for sale the Original Work and Derivative Works\", so dalicc:patentGrant is a permission and dalicc:chargeLicenseFee follows the right to sell. odrl:grantUse is not written, because the consistency check reads grant-use together with a share-alike duty as a conflict; the OSL-3.0 review records the same decision.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:ChangeLicense, because clause 1(c) admits no other licence for the copies You distribute; dalicc:promote, from section 4, which bars the use of the names and marks of the Licensor and of any contributor to endorse or promote products; and dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination from section 10.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"Clause 1(c) carries \"the proviso that copies of Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute shall be licensed under the Open Software License\", which is a licence-wide cc:ShareAlike duty. Section 6, Attribution Rights, puts cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:modificationNotice on odrl:modify and odrl:derive; cc:SourceCode hangs on odrl:distribute following OSL-3.0.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Sections 7 and 8 are quoted into their own fields. dalicc:additionalClauses carries sections 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11 and 15 and the notice that the licence text may not be modified.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"Section 11 names no legal system, only the forum where the Licensor resides or does business, so cc:jurisdiction stays dalicc:worldwide and the clause is quoted.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"Section 5 treats external deployment, including making the work available as an application over a computer network, as a distribution, which triggers the share-alike duty; proposed term dalicc:networkUseTrigger. Section 9 requires a reasonable effort to obtain the express assent of recipients; proposed term dalicc:recipientAssent. The automatic termination has no property; proposed term dalicc:terminatesOnBreach. All three are quoted instead.","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":"OSL-2.0 and OSL-2.1 carry the same model and differ only in section 10, the patent retaliation clause, which version 2.1 narrows to an action alleging that the Original Work itself infringes a patent. Against OSL-1.0 both add the sublicensing grant, the attribution clause and the right to use.","action":"none"}],"family":"Academic Free and Open Software","port_of":null,"variant_kind":"version","notes":"Modelled from the SPDX plain text and checked against the URL in cc:legalcode."}