London, 30 September 2010

The licence replaces the previous transactional click-use licence and provides rights to distribute, adapt, and exploit licensed data. It also replaces the current terms and conditions of the data.gov.uk platform, and some other legacy mechanisms. This streamlines the re-use of information across government. Although a licence for central government it is also being promoted for use within the wider public sector.

The OGL is compatible with the Creative Commons and Open Data Commons attribution licence models. The UK Government licensing framework defines the policy around where the OGL will apply. Both the Open Government Licence and the Framework are available on-line.

Semantic markup is added to the licence itself, as well.

The UK National Archives (press release) invites and welcomes feedback and reactions to this new licence.

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