The license_terms table
One row per licence code: the plain answer to what that licence lets you do with the factors it covers. It is keyed by the code and not by a release or a factor, so every release published under cc-by-4.0 gets the same five answers, and a publisher that changes its terms changes the code its next release carries.
Fields#
| field | type | required | example | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
code |
text | yes | ipcc-copyright-notice | The licence code, and the join key: release.license_code and factors_flat.license_code carry the same string. A lowercase convention rather than an SPDX identifier, derived from SPDX where one exists and named after the terms it points at where none does. |
own_footprint |
text | yes | yes_if | May I use these factors to work out my own organisation's footprint? One of five answers, the same five on all of the questions below: yes is granted outright, yes_if is granted provided you meet everything in conditions, ask means the terms reserve the right and the organisation in permission_holder can grant it, no means the terms refuse it, and unclear means no written grant settles the question. Treat unclear as not granted. |
publish_results |
text | yes | yes_if | May I publish figures I calculated with these factors, in a report or a disclosure? Same five answers. |
share_with_customers |
text | yes | ask | May I pass the factor data itself on to my customers, in a file or a deliverable? Same five answers. This is the question a redistribution asks, and it is one of the two where a licence most often stops short of a plain grant. |
embed_in_product |
text | yes | ask | May I build these factors into a product or a service I sell? Same five answers, and the other question that a licence often leaves reserved or unsettled. |
modify_combine |
text | yes | ask | May I change the values, or blend them with data of my own? Same five answers. Where it reads yes_if, conditions says what travels with the result, such as saying what you changed or licensing the result alike. |
conditions |
array | yes | {attribution} | Everything a yes_if on this row requires, as one set for the whole row rather than one per question: meet all of them, or the yes_if does not apply to you. Drawn from a closed list: attribution, state_changes, share_alike, non_commercial, no_endorsement, keep_unchanged, notify_publisher, territorial, hold_licence. Empty only where nothing on the row is conditional. |
basis |
text | yes | published_terms | How firm the ground under the five answers is. named_licence is a public licence with a name and a text, statute a national law that grants the reuse, published_terms the publisher's own written terms where no named licence applies, written_confirmation an answer the publisher gave in writing and that is recorded here, and owner_risk_decision a documented reading open-climate.ai took where the publisher's own words do not settle it, whether it said nothing, reserved everything, or named terms that match no licence. That last one is the only basis that is not the publisher's own words, so check it against the source yourself before you rely on it. |
permission_holder |
text | IPCC Secretariat | Who can grant a right the terms do not: the organisation to approach where an answer reads ask, and the one to put the question to where it reads unclear. An ask answer always names one. It is an organisation or a department, never an individual. |
|
evidence |
text | yes | "You may freely download and copy the material contained on this website for your personal, non-commercial use, without any right to resell or redistribute it or to compile or create derivative works there from." | The operative words the five answers were read from, quoted from the source where the source has them. It is what lets you re-judge an answer instead of taking it on trust. |
evidence_url |
text | yes | https://www.ipcc.ch/copyright/ | Where those words are published: the licence text, the publisher's terms page, or the statute. This is what binds you, not the row. |
verified_on |
date | yes | 2026-07-31 | When the page at evidence_url was last read and the answers confirmed against it. A publisher can change its terms at any time and this row moves only when someone re-reads them, so an old date is a prompt to check the source before you act on the answers. |
Notes#
Join it by the string. There is deliberately no foreign key from release.license_code, so a query writes JOIN open_ef.license_terms t ON t.code = r.license_code, or joins straight off factors_flat.license_code, which serves the code on every factor row. Every licence code a release carries has a row here, so nothing falls out of that join.
license_tier and these five answers do different jobs. The tier decides what open-climate.ai serves you: open and copyleft factors arrive with their values, restricted factors arrive with the values withheld, and prohibited factors are not served. The five answers decide what you may do with what you received, and they are the publisher's terms rather than ours. They are the same five answers a library page shows under "What can I do with this data?".
ask and unclear are not the same answer, and neither is a soft yes. ask means the terms reserve the right, so someone can grant it and permission_holder names who. unclear means no written grant settles the question at all: nobody has refused you, and nobody has granted you anything either. Read the whole row as a plain reading of the licence, not as legal advice. What binds you is the publisher's own text at evidence_url, and verified_on says when that text was last read.