Treat a CC BY-NC dependency as a red flag in a commercial product. The license defines NonCommercial as not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation, so a paid or revenue generating product is the very case it excludes. Flag it, find an alternative, or ask the rights holder.
What the license says
The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 legal code states that NonCommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation. It adds that exchanging the material for other copyrighted material by file sharing counts as NonCommercial provided no payment is involved.
Whether a given use is commercial is a legal judgement, so this post does not decide it for you. What a scan can do is surface the license so a person can decide.
Why it shows up in dependency reports
Creative Commons licenses are designed for creative works. They turn up in scan reports for things like datasets, fonts, icons, images, documentation snippets and sample data bundled in packages. Package metadata sometimes lists them in the license field even when the code is under another license.
Triage steps
- Find out what the CC BY-NC part is. Code, data, an image or a model? The remedy differs.
- Check whether it ships. A sample dataset used only in a test folder is different from an icon set inside your app.
- Check for a second license. Some projects offer dual terms, with a commercial option available on request.
- Pick a path. Replace the asset, remove it, buy or request a commercial license from the rights holder, or accept a documented non-commercial use.
- Write the decision down. Record the package, version, scope and who approved.
Policy suggestion
Put NonCommercial and similar restricted licenses in your review or deny tier rather than allow. A scanner can then stop a new dependency at the pull request, before it spreads. If you want a model for tiers, see license policy allow, review and deny tiers.
Remember the attribution part
The BY in the name means attribution is required where the license allows reuse. If you do end up with a legitimate use, keep the credit text the license asks for.
Quick check
Is an internal tool that earns no money safe with CC BY-NC?
Possibly, but the definition turns on the purpose of the use. Ask counsel before relying on that reading.
Does CC BY-NC count as open source?
The NonCommercial restriction limits use by purpose, which the Open Source Definition does not allow. Treat it as restricted rather than open source.
Safeguard's SBOM and dependency scanning supports the inventory this triage depends on.
Sources
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.
