{"id":"OdcOpenDatabaseLicense","title":"ODC Open Database License (ODbL)","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record models the share-alike database licence of Open Data Commons. The share-alike duty, the attribution and notice duties and the derivative-database permissions are all supported by the text. Two corrections were applied: commercial use, which Section 3.1 grants in as many words and which the record did not model at all, and the trademark prohibition of Section 2.3(c). The database-specific duties of Sections 4.6 and 4.7, access to the derivative database and parallel distribution, are beyond the vocabulary and are recorded as gaps.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carried no SPDX identifier. Its cc:legalcode, https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/, is the seeAlso URL of the SPDX entry ODbL-1.0, and the fetched text is headed \"Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0\". The proposal file rated this medium; the version in the document confirms it. Added.","action":"applied","change":"spdx:licenseId \"ODbL-1.0\" ;"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:title","description":"The title literal ended with a trailing blank, \"ODC Open Database License (ODbL) \". Removed.","action":"applied","change":"dct:title \"ODC Open Database License (ODbL)\" ;"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:source","description":"The record has cc:legalcode but no dct:source, so there is no second provenance link. The sibling records OdcPublicDomainDedicationAndLicence and OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10 both point dct:source at the corresponding opendefinition.org page. Proposed for symmetry rather than applied, because the opendefinition entry is a third-party description and not the licence.","action":"proposed","change":"dct:source <https://opendefinition.org/licenses/odc-odbl/> ;"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"The asset collection is dcmitype:Dataset only, which is right: the licence governs a database and Section 2.4 says expressly that it does not cover the individual contents.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"cc:CommercialUse was missing. Section 3.1: \"These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour.\" Without it the record read as if the licence were silent on commercial use, and the compatibility outcome against any NonCommercial licence was wrong. Added.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n        odrl:action cc:CommercialUse ] ;"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The other permissions follow Section 3.1, which lists extraction and re-utilisation of a substantial part of the contents, creation of derivative and collective databases, reproduction and distribution, communication, display, lending, making available and performance to the public.","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote was missing although Section 2.3(c) states: \"This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database.\" The two sibling records of the family, ODC-By and PDDL, both carry the prohibition on the identical clause. Added.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:promote ] ;"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:chargeDistributionFee is prohibited. The text supports a narrower rule than the record says: Section 4.6 requires the derivative database or the alteration file to be \"available at no more than a reasonable production cost for physical distributions and free of charge if distributed over the internet\", and Section 4.7(b)(i) requires the unrestricted parallel copy to be \"available without additional fee\". Section 3.1 at the same time allows commercial use. So the fee ban applies to the copy the licensee must hand over, not to every distribution. Left in place, because removing it would lose the only trace of Section 4.6 in the record, and left open for the association's decision.","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Section 4.8 states \"You may not sublicense the Database\" and the record does not say so. The vocabulary has dalicc:sublicense, defined but used by no record in the library. Proposed rather than applied, because the same sentence stands in ODC-By and in every Creative Commons 2.0 and 3.0 record, so it is one library-wide correction.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:sublicense ] ;"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:ShareAlike is a licence-wide duty, which matches Section 4.4: a derivative database that is publicly used must be offered \"only under the terms of this License\" or a later version or a compatible licence. cc:Attribution and cc:Notice hang on distribute, modify and derive, which matches Section 4.2, notices, and Section 4.3, the notice for a produced work.","action":"none"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"gap","field":"odrl:duty","description":"Section 4.6, access to derivative databases, has no term: the licensee must offer recipients either the entire derivative database or a file of all alterations, in machine readable form. It is the database equivalent of the source-code duty, but cc:SourceCode is defined for software and bending it would misstate the obligation. Proposed term: dalicc:derivativeDatabaseAccess.","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"info","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer is Section 7.1 and dalicc:LiabilityLimitation is Sections 8.1 and 8.2, both quoted verbatim. Section 5, moral rights, Section 6, fair dealing and database exceptions, Section 9, termination and reinstatement, and Section 10.4, choice of law, are not carried in the record.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"dalicc:worldwide matches Section 3.1, which grants a worldwide licence. dalicc:perpetual matches Section 9.3, \"Unless terminated under Section 9.1, this License is granted to You for the duration of applicable rights in the Database.\" Section 10.4 leaves the governing law to the jurisdiction where the terms are enforced, so no country belongs in cc:jurisdiction.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Section 4.7(a) forbids imposing technological measures that restrict the rights granted, and Section 4.7(b) allows them only against parallel distribution of an unrestricted copy. Neither half has a term. Proposed terms: dalicc:applyTechnicalProtectionMeasures and dalicc:parallelDistribution. Section 9, automatic termination on breach with reinstatement, and Section 4.8, the automatic downstream offer, need dalicc:terminationOnBreach and dalicc:downstreamOffer.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check reports no conflict, before and after the corrections. Adding cc:CommercialUse next to the dalicc:chargeDistributionFee prohibition raised no conflict either, because the dependency graph relates the fee actions to odrl:sell and odrl:commercialize but not to cc:CommercialUse.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The three Open Data Commons records now differ from each other the way the documents do: PDDL dedicates, ODC-By requires attribution and notices, ODbL adds share-alike and the database-specific duties. Before the review ODbL was missing commercial use, which is the one thing all three grant in identical words in their Section 3.1.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"major","field":"record","description":"Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency: the record prohibited dalicc:chargeDistributionFee although the ODbL nowhere forbids charging for a copy. What it does is cap the price of the copy that has to accompany a Restricted Database and of the derivative database file, and those two sentences are now quoted instead; dct:source was missing.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Section 3.1 reads: \"Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, the Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, terminable (but only under Section 9) license to Use the Database for the duration of any applicable copyright and Database Rights.\" The licence defines Database Rights as the sui generis database right, so the permission is text-supported; without it, the proposed EU and UK default rule reads the licence as not granting the right it exists to grant. dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights is permitted, with the cc:Attribution and cc:Notice duties that Section 4 attaches to every use.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote was prohibited on the strength of \"This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database.\" That sentence leaves trademarks outside the licence and says nothing about endorsement, which is silence; since 2026-09-23 what a silent licence grants about endorsement is the adopted default rule of the core dependency graph, not a statement of the record (see section 13 of docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md). Removed.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"odrl:modify and odrl:derive carried a dalicc:modificationNotice duty that no sentence of the text supports. The licence asks for no change log: the alteration file of Section 4.6(b) is one of two ways to give recipients access to a Derivative Database, an alternative to offering the whole Derivative Database, not a notice of the changes. Removed.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"dct:publisher","description":"dct:publisher read \"Socialtext Incorporated\", the publisher of the Common Public Attribution License, which the record had been copied from. The ODbL is published by Open Data Commons, a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Corrected to \"Open Data Commons (Open Knowledge Foundation)\".","action":"applied"}],"family":"Open Data Commons (ODbL, PDDL, ODC-By)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"The licence is drafted for databases and uses its own vocabulary, Database, Derivative Database, Collective Database, Produced Work, which the DALICC action set flattens onto the work-oriented terms derive, modify and distribute. That flattening is the reason why Section 4.5, the limits of share alike for a produced work, is invisible in the model. Nothing in this review is legal advice."}