License

Open content, clear attribution, protected project identity.

Small Organization Records Framework is intended to provide public standards and templates that organizations can use, adapt, and share. This page explains the intended license approach and important boundaries.

This license page is an early draft and should be reviewed before the project is publicly launched or incorporated into a formal legal structure.

Open content

Standards and templates are intended to be open resources.

Unless otherwise stated, the written standards, template guidance, educational guides, and downloadable template materials published by Small Organization Records Framework are intended to be made available as open content.

The goal is to allow businesses, nonprofits, community projects, educators, consultants, and small teams to use, adapt, translate, and share the materials with appropriate attribution.

Recommended license

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

The recommended open content license for the standards and templates is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, commonly called CC BY 4.0.

Under CC BY 4.0, people may generally share and adapt licensed material, including for commercial and non-commercial purposes, as long as they provide appropriate attribution and follow the license terms.

Before public launch, confirm the final license choice and update this page with the exact official license wording and link.

Attribution

How to credit the project.

If you use, adapt, translate, or redistribute the standards or templates, please credit the project in a clear and reasonable way.

Suggested attribution: Based on materials from Open Documentation Standard, version 0.1.

If you make changes, translations, or adaptations, make clear that your version has been modified and is not the official project version.

Project identity

The open content license does not grant use of the project identity.

The project name, logo, visual identity, official branding, domain names, and official project presentation are not included in the open content license.

You may use and adapt the standards and templates according to the content license, but you may not present your version as the official Small Organization Records Framework project unless you have permission.

In plain terms: the standards and templates are intended to be reusable; the official project identity is not.

No endorsement

Use of the materials does not imply endorsement.

Using, adapting, translating, or redistributing project materials does not mean Small Organization Records Framework endorses your organization, product, service, training, implementation, consulting work, or interpretation.

If you create adapted materials, products, services, guides, or templates based on this project, clearly distinguish them from the official project materials.

Professional-advice boundary

The license does not change the purpose of the materials.

The standards, templates, and guides are general educational resources. They are not legal, tax, financial, insurance, cybersecurity, compliance, employment, governance, or incident-response advice.

Adapting or redistributing the materials does not turn them into professional advice, certification, audit evidence, compliance proof, security assurance, or operational guarantee.

Template use

Templates may be adapted, but sensitive information should remain protected.

Templates are designed to help organizations document practical information. They should not be used to store passwords, API keys, MFA recovery codes, private keys, seed phrases, payment card data, confidential customer records, or other sensitive values in unsafe places.

Organizations are responsible for deciding how and where they use, store, protect, review, and share completed templates.

Website code

Website code may have a separate license.

The open content license applies to the standards, templates, and educational content unless otherwise stated. Website source code, build configuration, design implementation, scripts, and project infrastructure may be licensed separately or remain private.

If the website code is released publicly, its license should be stated separately.

Future updates

This page may be revised.

This license page may be updated as the project develops, adopts a formal structure, releases stable versions, accepts contributors, or finalizes its open content license.

For now, this page describes the intended licensing direction for the early public draft.