License
How UFFDA is licensed — code, content, contributed tiles. Plain English. Same posture we apply to upstream sources, applied to ourselves.
Code
UFFDA's app code is licensed Apache 2.0. The repository it lives in is not published, and that isn't a temporary state — it carries deployment and security detail we aren't willing to put in the open. So the license tells you the terms we'd hand the code over on; it doesn't hand you the site's source today.
What is public, right now, on GitHub: uffda-ag/sandbox (the contribution lane — community tiles, datasets, link cards; Apache 2.0 around the scaffolding, per-tile licenses inside), uffda-ag/irrigated-fields-tiles (the map tiles behind the irrigated-fields layer, CC-BY 4.0), and uffda-ag/lgrip30-mirror (our copy of a NASA irrigation map, which stays under its upstream terms, not ours).
What Apache 2.0 means for whatever code you do get from us: run it, change it, ship a product on top of it. Your code stays your code, under whatever license you want. Apache 2.0 also carries an explicit patent grant — that's the piece worth naming, because the MIT and BSD licenses don't. Build something commercial on UFFDA code and you don't inherit a patent lawsuit from us. We don't inherit one from you either.
Need a piece of the app code for something specific? Write to hello@uffda.ag and ask.
Content
The site copy, the docs, the canon — everything written down that's not code — is CC-BY 4.0. Quote us, screenshot us, mirror us, translate us. Just credit UFFDA and link back.
Attribution in practice: a one-line credit with a link is the floor. Examples: “Source: UFFDA — uffda.ag,” or “Adapted from uffda.ag.” If you're republishing a large block of our prose, link back to the page it's from. See our NOTICE file for the longer cite.
Tiles
Sandbox tiles are contributor-built, and each one declares its own license — SPDX identifier per tile, declared in tile.json. Approved iframe licenses: MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD-3-Clause, CC-BY-4.0, CC-BY-SA-4.0, CC0-1.0. AGPL and GPL aren't accepted on iframe tiles — copyleft-on-distribution doesn't compose cleanly with how we load them. Native-React tiles narrow further: MIT, Apache-2.0, or BSD-3-Clause, because that code bundles into the main app.
The Sandbox repo is uffda-ag/sandbox — Apache 2.0 wrapper for the schema and contribution scaffolding, CC-BY 4.0 for the docs. Per-tile licenses live inside each tile folder.
What NOASSERTION means
NOASSERTION is the SPDX value for “license uncertain.” Tile authors use it when they can't recover original provenance — old code, Stack-Overflow-derived utilities, composites of things whose lineage got lost along the way. It's an honest signal, not a workaround.
When you see the ? badge in a tile's footer, that's what it means: UFFDA hasn't independently verified the license. You're seeing what the contributor remembered, plus an optional licenseNote field with whatever best-effort context they could provide. Use accordingly. NOASSERTION is allowed on iframe and link tiles only; native-React tiles bundle into our main app and the bar for those is higher.
How to read this
This page is the same plain-English posture we apply to upstream data in /sources — applied to UFFDA itself. The license question, answered up front, so you don't have to call a lawyer to figure out what you can do with what we ship.
This is a starting point, not legal advice. For commercial deployment, run the actual license terms past someone who reads them for a living.