# Dharma — licenses and permitted reuse

Copyright © 2026 Sameer Regmi and Dharma contributors, for contributions in which they hold copyright.

There is no single license prescribed for a Buddhist website. This project separates reusable software from teaching content and preserves the permissions of every imported work. No project license replaces or expands a third party's rights.

## 1. Website software — MIT License

The following MIT License applies to project-authored application code, styles, build and verification scripts, tests, and developer documentation, except for separately identified teaching content, artwork, fonts, and third-party material. In particular, it does **not** relicense the English translation, the sutta dataset, embedded teaching passages, or the PDFs as unrestricted MIT content.

Copyright (c) 2026 Sameer Regmi and Dharma contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

## 2. Project teaching content — CC BY-NC 4.0, where rights exist

To the extent the Dharma contributors hold copyright or similar rights in their original Nepali and Hindi drafts, editorial introductions, glossary explanations, alignment annotations, captions, original artwork, and later editorial revisions, those contributions are offered under **Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)**.

Canonical license: <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/>

Legal code: <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode.en>

You may share and adapt covered content for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credit, a license link, and an indication of changes. Preserve supplied copyright, attribution and disclaimer notices. Do not imply endorsement or impose additional legal or technological restrictions on the licensed freedoms. The legal code governs; this paragraph is a summary.

Suggested project credit: “Dharma contributors, Dharma sutta reading project, CC BY-NC 4.0. Changes: [describe changes].” Identify the particular edition, language and review status, and retain any additional source attribution supplied with that edition.

No copyright or exclusive rights are asserted over ancient teachings, public-domain material, facts, or AI-generated output to the extent such output is not legally protectable. Licensing applies only to rights that the contributors can actually grant. AI-generated Nepali/Hindi translations remain unvalidated drafts; AI illustrations are interpretations, not historical records. Editorial review does not imply endorsement by the source translators or institutions.

## 3. Imported works keep their own licenses

| Material | Rights and required attribution |
| --- | --- |
| MN 63 English translation, *Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya* | © 1998 **Thanissaro Bhikkhu**. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), revised 30 November 2013. **CC BY-NC 4.0**. Source: <https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.063.than.html>. The English wording is preserved; HTML formatting and whitespace were normalized and passages/alignment groups added. The source itself points to a later edition elsewhere; this project uses the specified ATI edition. |
| Mahāsaṅgīti Pāli root text | The **ancient Pāli root text is public domain**. SuttaCentral-created contributions are CC0 unless otherwise specified; this does not place every third-party work on SuttaCentral under CC0. Source: <https://suttacentral.net/mn63/pli/ms>. Policy: <https://suttacentral.net/licensing>. Repository notice: <https://github.com/suttacentral/bilara-data/blob/published/LICENSE.md>. Roman Pāli is retained; Devanagari is a mechanical transliteration. CC0: <https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>. No project restriction is added to this public-domain material. |
| Noto Serif and Noto Serif Devanagari font files | **SIL Open Font License 1.1**, with upstream and file-specific notices retained in `assets/fonts/`. The font files are not MIT-licensed and are not project-owned. Font embedding does not place a document's text under the OFL. |
| npm libraries and associated native components | Their respective licenses apply. See `THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md` and `licenses/dependencies/` for the locked dependency inventory and preserved notices. These are development/authoring dependencies, not client-side runtime libraries. |

The Nepali/Hindi drafts were prepared using the Pāli and consultation of the ATI English edition. Where any contribution constitutes an adaptation of that English translation, its source attribution and noncommercial requirements continue to apply. Do not treat a Pāli/public-domain source as permission to disregard the rights in a modern translation.

## 4. PDFs, printing, downloads and recordings

PDFs and printouts are collections of the selected texts, fonts and optional illustrations. Each component retains the license listed above; the collection is **not** an unrestricted MIT or CC0 work. Keep the source/translator credit, edition date, license URLs, modification statement and draft/illustration notices when redistributing. Copies containing the ATI English translation are subject to its noncommercial license; project contributions are likewise offered under CC BY-NC 4.0 where rights exist.

No publicly licensed audio recording is included at present. A recording selected from a visitor's device is a local playback preview and is not uploaded or granted any license by this project. Future published recordings must identify the speaker, recording owner, text edition and recording license before release; this file does not prelicense somebody else's voice or recording.

## 5. Attribution and future additions

The website's license page, `ATTRIBUTION.md`, source records in `content/`, font notices and dependency notices provide the detailed audit trail. Preserve those notices with source redistributions. Linked websites and newer editions may have different terms; a link does not grant permission to copy them. Third-party names, marks and logos are not licensed as project branding, and no endorsement is claimed.

Before adding a translation, image, recording or library, record its creator, exact source, edition/date, license/permission, modifications and intended distribution. Add the appropriate notices to the website and exports. Material without clear permission must not be included in a release.