Open Works License Copyfree Certified License

Notice of License

The material provided on this page is not legal advice. It is an explanation of the intent of the design of the license, with regard to its use and applicability. The specific legal requirements of notice of license may vary in some jurisdictions. If you have questions related to the legal implications of the use of this license, you should consult a lawyer for specifics, and remember that the courts generally serve as the final arbiter of such matters.

Copyright Holder:

If you hold the copyright for something and wish to license it under the terms of the OWL, you may in essence do so just about any way you like. See a lawyer for more specifics, but acceptable means of offering a work under the terms of the OWL (or most/any other licenses, with appropriate substitutions of terms) should include:

  1. For online display of licensed content, post notice of acceptable license terms, such as with text (including link) similar in form to "This content Copyright 2008, and may be redistributed under the terms of the OWL."
  2. Offer compressed archive for download, with license text in an included file.
  3. Offer content download with included URL for the online OWL page and text similar to that in option 1 of this list.
  4. Provide physical printed media with the text of the license included.
  5. Provide physical printed media with included URL of the online OWL page and text similar to that in option 1 of this list.
  6. Provide physical storage media such as a CD with the text of the license in an included file.
  7. Provide physical storage media such as a CD with included URL of the online OWL page and text similar to that in option 1 of this list.
  8. Provide the full text of the license with the content.
  9. . . . et cetera.

You may add an image to your license notice text, such as an 80x15 widget image that links to the license text:


This should not stand in for a proper, textual notice of license terms, however, because its meaning as notice of license may be ambiguous to some readers. Preferred forms of notice should always include distribution of the text of the license with the covered work and explicit notice that these license terms apply.

The most common forms of explicit notice are the comment block, documentation, project file, and user interface.

Comment Block

License of notice may be given in a comment block per file. In some cases, this involves inserting the license text into a metadata field in your file editing tool, such as an image editor. In others, it may involve placing license text within the actual content of the file itself in cases where the file is not the user interface for the work. This is an example comment block for a programming language such as C.

/*
 * This work is Copyright 2014 <name>.  It may be distributed under the
 * terms of the Open Works License, version 0.9.4 or later.  The text of
 * version 0.9.4 follows.
 *
 * # Open Works License
 *
 * This is version 0.9.4 of the Open Works License
 *
 * ## Terms
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted by the holder(s) of copyright or other legal
 * privileges, author(s) or assembler(s), and contributor(s) of this work, to
 * any person who obtains a copy of this work in any form, to reproduce,
 * modify, distribute, publish, sell, sublicense, use, and/or otherwise deal in
 * the licensed material without restriction, provided the following conditions
 * are met:
 *
 * Redistributions, modified or unmodified, in whole or in part, must retain
 * applicable copyright and other legal privilege notices, the above license
 * notice, these conditions, and the following disclaimer.
 *
 * NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS IMPLIED BY, OR SHOULD BE INFERRED FROM, THIS
 * LICENSE OR THE ACT OF DISTRIBUTION UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE,
 * INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR
 * A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS,
 * ASSEMBLERS, OR HOLDERS OF COPYRIGHT OR OTHER LEGAL PRIVILEGE BE LIABLE FOR
 * ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT,
 * OR OTHERWISE ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE WORK OR THE USE
 * OF OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE WORK.
 *
 */

Documentation

When a work comes with documentation or explanatory text, and these materials serve as the location for copyright notice, they may also be well suited to the task of presenting the text of the license to recipients of the work. In this case, a section clearly identifying the license terms of the work should reproduce the full text of the license, most likely immediately following the work's copyright notice.

Notice may take a form similar to "This work, its documentation, logos, artwork, and other supporting materials are Copyright 2014 <name>, and are distributed under the terms of the Open Works License version 0.9.4 or later." Notice should preferably be followed by the full text of the license.

Project File

When a work is distributed as a project, where several files are collected together in a directory (perhaps including subdirectories), the project file approach may be appropriate. This approach is most commonly used for software projects, where it is customary to include copyright notice and either mention of the license or the license text itself in a README or COPYING file. When the license is mentioned, but not reproduced in full, it is customary to then include the license text in a LICENSE file.

User Interface

When the consumer of a work is assumed to deal with a different form of the work than the creator, as in the cases of a software end user, the interface portion or form of the work may contain licensing information. An example of this is the click-through license terms used especially by proprietary software End User License Agreements, where the EULA is presented in a GUI dialog with an "I Accept" button or similar means of indicating acceptance as part of the process of installing the software. This is not a means that is restricted to proprietary software; it can be used for other types of license, such as the Open Works License.

Redistributor:

It is probably a bad idea to redistribute content covered by the terms of any license without distributing the full text of the license with the content, if you are not the copyright holder of that content, for legal reasons.

Recipient:

If you believe you have received content subject to the terms of the OWL without being advised of the applicability of the OWL's terms, please contact the redistributor to resolve the issue. If the redistributor fails to abide by the terms of the OWL, please contact the copyright holder if possible and inform him or her of this oversight. Such license enforcement issues are not the responsibility of the maintainer of the OWL itself.

Dual-Licensing:

Because of its weak heritability and license restriction characteristics, there should be no legal need to dual-license a work covered by the OWL to encourage adoption, use, or redistribution. It may serve as an ideal companion to licenses with strong heritability such as the CCD CopyWrite License, however -- particularly in cases where the software-specific BSD and MIT/X11 licenses are not appropriate. There may be social reasons to dual-license a work covered by the OWL, however, to associate a given work with an established license with significant mindshare. The BSD and MIT/X11 licenses are ideal for these purposes with regard to software, and the Creative Commons Zero (or CC0) license and public domain dedication serves similarly well for other content types.