The Open Licence (French), also known as Licence Ouverte / Open Licence (abbreviated "LO") or Licence Ouverte Etalab, is a French open license published on October 18, 2011, by Etalab, the task force under the French Prime Minister's authority responsible for open government data policy in France. It was created to facilitate and encourage the reuse of public sector information, including data and documents produced by French state administrations.
Key Characteristics
- Rights granted: The license grants the reuser a non-exclusive, personal, and free right to use the information without geographical or temporal limits. This includes the right to reproduce, distribute, adapt, enrich, and commercially exploit the information.
- Not a copyleft license: Unlike some open licenses, the Licence Ouverte does not require derivative works to be distributed under an identical license.
- Conditions of use: Reusers must (1) provide clear and up-to-date attribution of the source (name of the producer or URL), (2) not hold the producer liable for any inaccuracies, and (3) ensure the information is not subject to intellectual property rights.
Compatibility
The license was designed to be compatible with several other major open licenses:
- Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 2.0 and later versions)
- Open Government Licence (OGL) of the United Kingdom
- Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) of the Open Knowledge Foundation
Version 2.0
A new version (2.0) was published by Etalab following the issuance of Decree No. 2017-638 of April 27, 2017, in the French Official Journal. This version maintains compatibility with the earlier version and with the "model" licenses. It is listed by the SPDX project under the identifier Etalab-2.0. The decree made LO 2.0 a standard license usable by any French administration for publishing public data.
Notable Uses
- The city of Bordeaux uses the Open Licence to release data sets.
- The Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon releases digitized public domain works under this license via its Numelyo portal.
- The Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN) has made all its public data available under the Licence Ouverte since January 1, 2021.
- On June 17, 2021, the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) released over 19 million satellite images from the SPOT 1–5 satellites (1986–2015) under this license.
- Numerous French university libraries and regional digital heritage portals (Numistral, Overnia, Limedia, etc.) use the license.
Legal Basis
Since March 2017, the Licence Ouverte / Open Licence has been the default license for all free reuse of public data from French state administrations and their public administrative establishments, as provided for by French law (Decree No. 2017-638, pursuant to Article L. 323-2 of the Code des relations entre le public et l'administration).
