Re: Is the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL-UK-3.0) DFSG-free ?

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Mon, 27 Jan 2025 21:09:53 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<17737282.5WZRyvrzyv@soren-desktop>

Charles,

On Monday, January 27, 2025 6:07:54 PM MST Charles Plessy wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> on a package update I have hit the Open Government License 3.0...
> 
> https://spdx.org/licenses/OGL-UK-3.0.html
> 
> I could not find works licensed under these terms via
> codesearch.debian.net, and was not successful finding useful information
> with search engines.
> 
> Does anybody know if it was already tried through the FTP team?

I have not previously heard of the OGLv3.0 license, but reading over it, the terms do not 
appear to be a problem as long as what is being licensed does not belong to the list of 
enumerated exceptions to which the license does not apply:

This licence does not cover:

personal data in the Information;
Information that has not been accessed by way of publication or disclosure under 
information access legislation (including the Freedom of Information Acts for the UK and 
Scotland) by or with the consent of the Information Provider;
departmental or public sector organisation logos, crests and the Royal Arms except where 
they form an integral part of a document or dataset;
military insignia;
third party rights the Information Provider is not authorised to license;
other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade marks, and design rights; and
identity documents such as the British Passport

I would imagine it is unlikely that what you are packaging contains any of the above 
information, but you should make a reasonable effort to assure it doesn’t before 
submitting the package to the NEW queue.

Regarding the DFSG status of the license, the OGLv3.0 itself claims it can be relicensed as 
CC-BY-4.0, which is DFSG-free.

"These terms are compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 and the 
Open Data Commons Attribution License, both of which license copyright and database 
rights. This means that when the Information is adapted and licensed under either of 
those licences, you automatically satisfy the conditions of the OGL when you comply with 
the other licence. The OGLv3.0 is Open Definition compliant."

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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