Short description: The Licence Ouverte / Open Licence is a French free licence published by Etalab for open data from the State of France. Since 2017, it has been one of the reference licences for the publication of public data. The licence was designed to be compatible with Creative Commons Licences, the Open Government Licence, and the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence. Information released under the Open Licence may be re-used with attribution, in the form of a URL or other identification of the producer.

The "Open Licence" has the following characteristics:

• great freedom to reuse information:
  • an open and free licence which provides the necessary legal certainty for producers and re-users of public data;
  • a licence that promotes the widest possible re-use by allowing the reproduction, redistribution, adaptation and commercial exploitation of data;
  • a licence that is part of an international context by being compatible with the standards of Open Data licences developed abroad and in particular those of the British government (Open Government Licence) as well as other international standards (ODC-BY, CC-BY 2.0);
• a strong requirement for transparency of the data and quality of the sources by making it mandatory to mention the authorship;
• it represents an opportunity for pooling other public data by setting up a reusable standard for use by local authorities who would like to embark on the opening up of public data.

Recommendations: Policy and Strategy Alignment (2); Digital Government Integration (7)