In the current version of DCAT, dct:license has been replaced by dct:rights, although the use of dct:license is not excluded [1].
Will this have an impact on DCAT-AP?
In any case, I would suggest making "licence type" (dct:type) a recommended (and not mandatory) property for dct:LicenseDocument (see Section 7.8).
Component
DocumentationCategory
improvement
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Comments
Consideration
It may be the case that publishers do not know which of the listed licence types is appropriate for their licence. On the other hand, it may be possible to derive the type from the licence.
Proposed resolution
Make the licence type optional.
Proposed action
Update specification, changing the title of section 7.8.1 to “Recommended properties for License Document”, and the cardinality of dct:type for dct:LicenseDocument to 0..n.
Consideration
The argument in the discussion in the GLD WG was that dct:rights is more general and would allow also allow information that is not technically a licence, e.g. a copyright statement
Proposed resolution
As DCAT still allows the more specific License document to be used, there is no need to change this.
Proposed action
No change to the specification.
I would suggest we stick to the solution adopted in DCAT (+ the recommended use of licence type), to support the same scenario ("allow information that is not technically a licence, e.g. a copyright statement").
Actually, this is exactly the case of INSPIRE metadata, which include two free-text elements for this (namely, "conditions for access and use" and "limitations on public access").
I am including both in the version for review at the meeting on 18 July, with dct:license a recommended property and dct:rights an optional property for Distribution.
Resolved at meeting 18 July 2013, see report at https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/document/dcat-application-profile-wg-virtual-meeting-2013-07-18.
Resolution implemented in draft 0.04 at https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/document/dcat-application-profile-data-portals-europe-draft-final-text