Recently (2025) I have had services asking me to give them a “sub-licence” so that their software vendor can put a CORE instrument into their software. I try to keep my bureaucratic work on CORE (or anything!) to an absolute minimum so please don’t ask me for this unless you think you need a change to content of the instrument. All the CORE instruments are covered, for ever, by a sensible Creative Commons licence. Please read https://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk/home/copyright-licensing/ and refer the software vendor to that and to the Creative Commons licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Provided that you and they are complying with that licence no other licence, or “sub-licence” is needed: you and they are behaving completely in line with the conditions of the licence.
Those conditions are pretty simple:
- The text of the instrument must not be changed though …
- we are happy for the boxes of demographic and service information at the top of the form to be removed if the data you need there is collected elsewhere in the software
- similarly you can remove the “Office use only” column if there is one on the instrument and you can remove the scoring instructions (assuming scoring will be handled in software)
- The copyright line: “© CORE System Trust: https://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk/copyright.pdf” MUST be visible to the end user somewhere in the form
- Neither you nor the software vendor can be making a profit simply from reselling the instrument in the software.
Created 21/5/25. Text and header image (“rules, rules, rules” from Avignon, France): CE and licenced under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) which applies to all posts and pages (but is different from the licence for the instruments!!)
