Licensing & attribution¶

Two licences, not one¶

The repository currently ships a single MIT LICENSE file. That is insufficient, because data is not code and the two need different terms.

What	Licence
Scripts, configuration, documentation	MIT
Data contributed by this project	CC BY 4.0
Data from an upstream source	The upstream licence, recorded per dataset

MIT is a software licence. It talks about "the Software" and warranty disclaimers; it says nothing coherent about a database. Creative Commons licences are designed for content, and CC BY 4.0 explicitly covers sui generis database rights, which exist in the EU and matter for boundary data.

The upstream licence always wins¶

This project cannot grant rights it does not have. A dataset sourced under CC BY 4.0 stays CC BY 4.0 no matter what this page says, and its attribution requirement passes through to you.

Every dataset's catalog page names its source and licence. Every manifest.json records them:

"source": {
  "name": "geoBoundaries",
  "url": "https://www.geoboundaries.org/",
  "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "retrieved": "2026-08-10"
}

Check the dataset page before redistributing. There is no single answer for the whole repository, and there never will be.

No copyleft¶

Every dataset here is under a permissive licence — CC BY, CC0, public domain or equivalent. Share-alike sources are excluded, and CI enforces the allow-list.

The reason is ODbL specifically. It defines a Derivative Database, and mixing one ODbL dataset into this collection would arguably place the entire collection under ODbL — changing the terms for every existing consumer without their knowledge. That is not a trade this project will make, even though it costs real coverage: a third of geoBoundaries' Americas entries are ruled out this way.

Gaps are recorded on the Roadmap. They get closed by finding a permissive source, not by relaxing the rule.

Conditions that travel with a grant¶

Some open licences arrive with obligations beyond attribution, and those are recorded in the manifest's source.license_note.

Chile is the current example. IDE Chile's DPA 2023 is published as CC BY, but the underlying cartography circulates under Resolución N°50 de 2019 of DIFROL, and Chilean rules ask that products derived from it be reviewed equally. This is standard for Chilean official cartography — it exists because of the Antarctic claim and the land borders — and it is reproduced here rather than quietly dropped.

Attribution¶

For datasets requiring it, attribute both the original source and this project:

Boundaries from [source name], via World GeoJSON (https://github.com/andresgmg/World-GeoJSON), licensed under [licence].

For Chile's current data:

Boundaries from the Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile (BCN) / IDE Chile, via World GeoJSON.

Citation¶

@misc{worldgeojson,
  author       = {Marquez, Andres},
  title        = {World GeoJSON: open administrative boundaries},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/andresgmg/World-GeoJSON}}
}

Cite the source dataset as well where your work depends on the geometry rather than on the packaging.

Contributing data¶

By contributing, you confirm that:

You have the right to contribute the data.
The upstream licence permits redistribution, including commercial use.
The source block in the manifest is accurate and complete.

See Approved sources & licensing for what is acceptable — and specifically for why GADM is not.

No warranty¶

These boundaries are provided as-is. They are not suitable for legal, navigational or cadastral purposes. Feature counts are known to be incomplete in places — Chile ships 343 of 346 communes — and geometry accuracy is whatever the upstream source provided.

Disputed boundaries¶

Boundaries follow the named upstream source. Their inclusion is not a statement about sovereignty. See Disputed boundaries.