Data Usage & Licensing

Timeline DSL supports importing from Wikidata (import wikidata). This page explains the license terms for imported data and whether attribution is required when publishing generated timelines.

Note that this page is a project-level summary, not legal advice.

Wikidata data

Wikidata structured data is licensed under CC0. It is free to use without attribution.

Structured data such as entity labels and dates imported via import wikidata falls under this. See the grammar reference for the import syntax.

Wikipedia data

Wikipedia article text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. When quoting, you must provide attribution, a link to the license, an indication of whether changes were made, and apply the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Images and figures, unlike article text, carry individual licenses set per file. If you use them, check the license on each file’s description page (such as Wikimedia Commons).

Attribution when publishing

Whether attribution is required when publishing a generated timeline depends on the kind of data you used.

• Timelines that use only Wikidata structured data: CC0, so they can be published without attribution.
• Timelines that quote Wikipedia article text: you must show the source (the Wikipedia article quoted), a link to the license, and whether changes were made, and apply CC BY-SA 4.0 to the quoted parts. If you include images or figures, follow each file’s individual license.

Provide attribution in a form readers can verify, such as the timeline’s source field or a footnote on the published page.