View source for rel-license

{{DISPLAYTITLE:rel="license"}}

<p class="entry-summary">Rel-License is a simple, open, format for indicating content licenses which is  embedable in HTML or XHTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. Rel-License is one of several [[microformats|microformat]] open standards.</p>

== Specification 2005-02-06 ==
=== Author ===
[http://tantek.com/ Tantek Çelik] ([http://technorati.com Technorati, Inc.], formerly of [http://microsoft.com/ Microsoft Corporation])

=== Copyright ===
Per the public domain release on [[User:Tantek|my user page]], this specification is released into the public domain.

{{MicroFormatPublicDomainContributionStatement}}

=== Patents ===
{{MicroFormatPatentStatement}}

== Abstract ==
Rel-License is one of several microformats.  By adding <code>rel="license"</code> to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink is a license for the current page. E.g. with the following hyperlink:

<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" rel="license">cc by 2.0</a>
</syntaxhighlight>

the author indicates that the page is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Required license.

== Multiple Licenses ==
Multiple such rel="license" hyperlinks indicate that the page is available under any of the referred licenses.  E.g. the following hyperlinks could be used to declare that a page is available under either a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Required license or the Apache 2.0 license:

<syntaxhighlight lang="html"><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" rel="license">cc by 2.0</a>
<a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0" rel="license">Apache 2.0</a></syntaxhighlight>

== XMDP profile ==
The following is an [http://gmpg.org/xmdp/ XMDP] profile for the [[rel-license]] specification.

=== URLs ===
This profile is hosted as a separate XMDP file on microformats.org:
* http://microformats.org/profile/rel-license
* shortURL: http://ufs.cc/x/rel-license

=== Usage ===
Profiles are referenced in (X)HTML files in the &lt;HEAD&gt; tag, e.g.:
<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
<head profile='http://microformats.org/profile/rel-license'>
</syntaxhighlight>

=== Profile ===
<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
<dl class="profile">
 <dt id="rel">rel</dt>
 <dd><p>
   <a rel="help" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#adef-rel">
     HTML4 definition of the 'rel' attribute.</a>  
   Here is an additional value as defined in the
   <a rel="help start" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-license">
   rel-license specification</a> 
   .</p>
  <dl>
   <dt id="license">license</dt>
   <dd>Indicates that the referred resource is a license for the referring page.</dd>
  </dl>
 </dd>
</dl>
</syntaxhighlight>

== Implementations ==
* [http://www.webstandards.org/action/dwtf/microformats/ Dreamweaver Extension suite] from the [http://webstandards.org/ Web Standards Project] enables the authoring of rel-license links from within Dreamweaver 8. Includes (cc) defaults.
* [http://placenamehere.com/TXP/pnh_mf/ pnh_mf] is a plugin for [http://textpattern.com/ Textpattern] that supports embedding rel license and other microformats in templates and blog posts. Written by [http://placenamehere.com/ Chris Casciano].
* [http://creativecommons.org/license/ Creative Commons (cc) license chooser]
* [http://search.yahoo.com/cc Yahoo! (cc) search] (appears to pick up link-rel in a but not link elements)
* [http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29508 Google "Usage Rights" search] (also appears to pick up link-rel in a but not link elements)

== List of Licenses ==
* [http://creativecommons.org CC]
* [http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ Open Source Initiative] licenses -- mostly software-focused

== Articles ==
This section is '''informative'''.

Articles about rel-license, most recent first. When this section gets too big, we can move it to [[rel-license-articles]].
* (undated) [http://reference.sitepoint.com/html/rel-mf#rel__license SitePoint reference: rel- Microformats / license] by Ian Lloyd

== References ==
=== Normative References ===
* [http://gmpg.org/xmdp/ XMDP]

=== Informative References ===
* 2004-02-11 rel="license" first proposed in presentation [http://tantek.com/presentations/2004etech/realworldsemanticspres.html real world semantics] at 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, San Diego, CA, USA.
* 2004-02-25 [http://tantek.com/log/2004/02.html#d25t1805 Thorough discussion of rel="license"] including advantages and presentation possibilities. 
* [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Creative Commons 2.0 By (Attribution Required) license]
* [http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Apache 2.0 license]
* Contributed from <nowiki>http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/RelLicense</nowiki> ([https://web.archive.org/web/20050321015449/http://developers.technorati.com/wiki/RelLicense 2005-03-21 Internet Archive version])
* [http://microformatique.com/?p=60 Know your rel-license at Microformatique]

== see also ==
* [[rel-license-issues]] - issues which have been raised with this microformat.
* [[rel-faq]]

[[Category:Specifications]]
[[Category:rel-license]]