Creative Commons has been endorsed by WA State Government as the recommended default licensing option for open government data. Creative Commons makes your licensing choices easy – by choosing one of these licences you’re adopting widely used and internationally recognised standards for open data licensing. The licence information on your dataset will automatically link to the relevant licence on the creativecommons.org website.

Custom licensing

However sometimes you need a custom licence – your department hasn’t yet adopted Creative Commons as their standard licence for open data, or your data falls under the Fees Apply, Restricted, or Government Use Only access levels.

1. Choose one of the Custom licence options:
   1. Government Use
      Commercial Use
      Personal & Academic Use
      Public Domain
      Other
2. In the Custom Licence URL field provide a link to your custom license 

Tip: You can upload your custom licence as a resource on the next screen, then simply come back and provide that link as the Custom Licence URL.

A dataset made available with a Custom (Commercial Use) licence. The licence document is accessed by clicking the licence information.

If you choose a custom licence option but don’t supply a URL, users who try to click through to your licence will be directed to send an email to the maintainer contact to enquire about licensing options.

Depending on the device that the user is accessing data.wa.gov.au via, they should be prompted with the following text when sending the email:

When contacting a data publisher to enquire about licensing options, there’s a few things that it’ll be helpful to include in your enquiry. Be sure to read the information provided on data.wa.gov.au about this dataset, and then include the below info in your message. This text can then be deleted.

• Your name
• Your organisation (if applicable)
• How you intend to use the data

The email subject line will also default to include the name of the dataset, so you’ll know which of your datasets the user is enquiring about.

Additional licensing options

Sometimes you need more flexibility in the licences you advertise on your data, you can make use of the Has additional licensing options field.

1. Choose Yes from Has additional licensing options.
2. In the Additional Licensing Options URL field provide a link to a webpage where your licensing options are discussed in more detail.

A dataset made available with a Custom (Commercial Use) licence and additional licensing options.