Licence types

The most common types of licence can be found in the table below with their most distinguishing features. Please follow the links to view the full licence conditions.

Looking for a licence to share your dataset?

Please contact us sense@es.catapult.org.uk if you wish to share a dataset under a licence that doesn't appear in the table below or you have any queries about selecting the most appropriate licence as you may need a custom licence which we can help you with.

Open licences:

UK Open Government Licence (OGL-3.0) (Attribution + link to licence + citation)

Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) (Attribution + share-alike (copyleft))

Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) (Public domain (all rights waived))

Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0 (Attribution)

Creative Commons Zero (CCO-1.0) (Public domain (all rights waived))

Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-4.0) (Attribution required only)

Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA-4.0) (Attribution + share-alike (copyleft))

Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC-4.0) (Attribution + non-commercial use only)

Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA-4.0) (Attribution + non-commercial use only + share-alike (copyleft))

Permissive licences:

GNU Free Documentation (GFDL) v1.3 (Attribution + share-alike (copyleft), preserve copyright notices, maintain invariant sections and provide full licence text)

MIT (Include original copyright notice and licence text in software)

Apache-2.0 (Preserve copyright, patent and trademark notices, provide copy of the licence and detail significant changes made to files)

Bespoke:

Custom (Specific terms and restrictions)