{"id":"OpenDataCommonsAttributionLicenseV10","title":"Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/ODC-By-1.0.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record models the attribution-only database licence of Open Data Commons. The two clause fields were wrong: dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer held the website disclaimer of opendatacommons.org instead of Section 7.1 of the licence, and the liability limitation of Section 8 was missing altogether. Both were corrected, and the SPDX identifier was added. The open question for the association is the licence-wide cc:ShareAlike duty: this licence has no share-alike clause, but Section 4.2(a) does require conveying under the terms of this licence.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carried no SPDX identifier although its title is word for word the SPDX name of ODC-By-1.0 and its cc:legalcode is the SPDX seeAlso URL. Added.","action":"applied","change":"spdx:licenseId \"ODC-By-1.0\" ;"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"dct:source","description":"cc:legalcode is https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/ and dct:source is the opendefinition.org page for ODC-By. The two differ, which the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) lists; here it is deliberate, the licence text plus a third-party description, not an error.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Dataset only, which matches a licence whose subject is a database and which says in Section 2.4 that it does not cover the individual contents.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The permissions follow Section 3.1, which grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use the database and states that \"These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour.\" cc:CommercialUse, cc:DerivativeWorks, dalicc:ModifiedWorks, derive, modify, reproduce, distribute, display and present are all covered.","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote rests on Section 2.3(c), \"This License does not cover any trademarks associated with the Database.\" dalicc:ChangeLicense rests on Section 4.2(a), the requirement to convey only under the terms of this licence, and on the last sentence of Section 4.4, \"You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License.\"","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Section 4.4 opens with \"You may not sublicense the Database\" and the record does not say so. dalicc:sublicense exists in the vocabulary and is used by no record. Proposed as one library-wide correction together with ODbL and the Creative Commons ports.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:sublicense ] ;"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:duty","description":"The record carries a licence-wide cc:ShareAlike duty. ODC-By has no share-alike clause: its preamble says the licence is \"intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use this Database subject only to the attribution requirements set out in Section 4\", and the Open Definition and SPDX both treat it as attribution-only. What the text does say, in Section 4.2(a), is that if You publicly convey the database, a derivative database or the database in a collective database, You must \"Do so only under the terms of this License\". That sentence is the whole basis for the duty and it is debated in practice. Left unchanged, because removing it is an interpretive decision that changes every compatibility answer this record gives, and it is put to the association instead.","action":"none"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:duty","description":"cc:Attribution and cc:Notice hang on distribute, modify and derive, which matches Section 4.2, the notice obligations, and Section 4.3, the notice for a produced work with its model sentence \"Contains information from DATABASE NAME which is made available under the ODC Attribution License.\"","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer did not hold a clause of the licence at all: it held the standard website disclaimer of opendatacommons.org, \"Open Data Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services of any kind ...\", which is the boilerplate printed above every licence on that site. Replaced with Section 7.1 of the licence, quoted verbatim, and Section 8.1 with 8.2 added as dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, which the record did not have.","action":"applied","change":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer \"\"\"The Database is licensed by the Licensor \"as is\" and without any warranty of any kind ...\"\"\" ;\ndalicc:LiabilityLimitation \"\"\"Subject to any liability that may not be excluded or limited by law, the Licensor is not liable for ...\"\"\" ;"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:perpetual are supported by Section 3.1 and Section 9.3. Section 10.4 leaves the governing law to the jurisdiction where the terms are enforced.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"record","description":"Section 9.1 and 9.4, automatic termination on breach with reinstatement after the breach ceases, Section 4.4, the automatic offer to every downstream recipient, and Section 5, the moral-rights handling, have no vocabulary terms. Proposed terms: dalicc:terminationOnBreach, dalicc:downstreamOffer, dalicc:moralRightsReserved. Unlike ODbL this licence has no technological measures clause, so no anti-DRM term is needed here.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check reports no conflict, before and after the corrections.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) flagged that this record and CC-BY-SA-4.0 had an identical deontic signature, which is wrong for a pair made of an attribution-only database licence and a copyleft content licence. After the review the two differ, because CC-BY-SA-4.0 regained dalicc:chargeDistributionFee, but the deeper cause is the cc:ShareAlike duty in this record, which is the open question above. Inside its own family this record now differs from ODbL exactly where the documents differ: ODbL adds Section 4.4 share alike, Section 4.6 access to derivative databases and Section 4.7 technological measures.","action":"none"},{"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.\" (Section 2.3(c)). 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, as on the ODbL record.","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. Section 4.2 asks whoever Publicly Conveys the Database or a Derivative Database to do so under this License, to \"Include a copy of this License or its Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)\" and to \"Keep intact any copyright or Database Right notices and notices that refer to this License\"; nothing asks for a notice of the changes made. Removed, as on the ODbL record.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Open Data Commons (ODbL, PDDL, ODC-By)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"The text was read from the SPDX plain-text rendering, which is byte-identical in substance to the opendatacommons.org page named in cc:legalcode. Nothing in this review is legal advice."}