Open Licence Etalab 2.0

Last name 03/03/2026

Géné Foncier reuses and processes public archival documents (cadastral plans, historical maps) under the Open Licence / Licence Ouverte Etalab version 2.0, the reference licence for French public sector information. These documents are georeferenced, converted to Cloud-Optimised GeoTIFF (COG) and processed by artificial intelligence to produce vectorised cadastral polygons.

What is the Open Licence Etalab 2.0?

The Open Licence 2.0 (Licence Ouverte) was created by Etalab, the French government's taskforce for open data. Established by Decree No. 2017-638 under Article L.323-2 of the Code des relations entre le public et l'administration (CRPA), it is the reference licence for the reuse of French public sector information.

This licence grants a non-exclusive, free, worldwide and unlimited right to reuse public information for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Rights Granted

Under the Open Licence Etalab 2.0, Géné Foncier is authorised to:

Reproduce, copy and communicate the documents
Adapt, modify, extract and transform them to create derivative works
Distribute, redistribute and publish them
Exploit them commercially

Obligation: Source Attribution

The sole obligation imposed by the licence is to mention the source of the information. For each document reused on Géné Foncier, the following must be indicated:

Engagement	Description	Example
Source	Name of the institution holding the original document	Departmental Archives of Pas-de-Calais
Reference	Archival reference number (cote)	3 P 123/45
Date	Date of the document or last update	1830
Author	Name of the author, if applicable	Géomètre Martin

Example attribution on Géné Foncier:
Source: Departmental Archives of Pas-de-Calais, ref. 3 P 123/45 — Napoleonic cadastral plan, commune of Liévin, 1830. Licence Ouverte Etalab 2.0.

The attribution must not confer an official character on the reuse, nor suggest any endorsement or approval by the source institution.

Processing Performed by Géné Foncier

Géné Foncier applies the following transformations to the archival documents, all of which fall within the rights granted by the Open Licence Etalab 2.0 (adaptation, modification, extraction and transformation to create derivative works):

1. Georeferencing

Scanned archival plans are georeferenced by aligning them with modern geographic coordinate systems (EPSG:2154 Lambert-93 or WGS84), enabling overlay with contemporary maps.

2. COG Generation

Georeferenced rasters are converted to Cloud-Optimised GeoTIFF (COG) format, enabling efficient tile-based serving and dynamic visualisation via STAC and TiTiler.

3. AI Polygonisation

An artificial intelligence model analyses the cadastral plans to automatically detect and vectorise parcel boundaries, producing georeferenced polygons stored in PostGIS.

Derivative works: The georeferenced rasters (COG) and vectorised polygons produced by Géné Foncier constitute derivative works within the meaning of the Open Licence Etalab 2.0. As such, they may be freely reused under the same licence conditions, provided the original source is attributed.

Documents Covered

The following types of public archival documents, digitised and made available by French departmental archives, are reused on Géné Foncier under the Etalab licence:

Napoleonic cadastral plans (series 3 P)
Revised cadastral plans
Historical maps and land surveys

Parish and civil registers (series E)
Notaries
Administrative documents and tables

Exclusions and Limitations

The following documents are NOT covered by the Etalab licence and require specific authorisation:

Category	Details
Collection	Documents with references starting with J (private archives) or Fi (iconographic collections from private sources) require explicit authorisation from the depositor.
Personal data	Documents containing personal data of potentially living persons must be processed in compliance with the GDPR. See our Privacy.
Copy	Works whose author has been dead for less than 70 years may still be protected by copyright (Articles L.123-1 et seq. of the French Intellectual Property Code).

Compatibility with Other Licences

The Open Licence Etalab 2.0 is compatible with the following international open data licences:

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (CC-BY 2.0)
Open Data Commons Attribution (ODC-BY)
Open Government Licence (OGL — United Kingdom)

Official Text

The full text of the Open Licence Etalab 2.0 is available on the official French government open data portal:

Licence Ouverte 2.0 — etalab.gouv.fr

Licence Ouverte 2.0 — data.gouv.fr

Géné Foncier Commitment

Géné Foncier is committed to:

Systematically displaying the source attribution on each reused archival document (source, reference, date and author when applicable).
Not distorting the meaning of the information contained in the original documents.
Complying with the GDPR for any document containing personal data of potentially living persons.
Verifying the applicable licence for each departmental archives service before reusing their documents.

Contact

If you believe that a document displayed on Géné Foncier does not comply with the applicable licence conditions, or if you are the rights holder of a document and wish to request its removal, please contact us at: contact@terrapartus.fr