Spoken Spelling Bee

Licences

Last updated November 5, 2026

Spoken Spelling Bee is built on open data, open models and open-source software. This page carries the notices their licences ask for, in full. The app shows the short form under Settings > Word data and licences and links here.

In short

Open English WordNet

English definitions come from Open English WordNet, 2025 Edition, © The Open English WordNet Team, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Changes were made: the entries were filtered to words the bee can spell, each sense cut to its first glosses, and the result repacked as a database for the phone. Open English WordNet is derived from Princeton WordNet 3.1, © 2011 Princeton University. The WordNet licence asks that its notice appear on all copies of the database, so here it is, as distributed with Open English WordNet (github.com/globalwordnet/english-wordnet, WNDB_License.txt):

This software and database is being provided to you, the LICENSEE, by
the Open English Wordnet team under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (CC-BY 4.0).

Open English Wordnet 2023 Copyright 2023 by the Open English Wordnet team.

Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
database and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or
royalty is hereby granted, provided that you agree to comply with
the following copyright notice and statements, including the disclaimer,
and that the same appear on ALL copies of the software, database and
documentation, including modifications that you make for internal
use or for distribution.

WordNet 3.1 Copyright 2011 by Princeton University.  All rights reserved.

THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED.  BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT-
ABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE
OF THE LICENSED SOFTWARE, DATABASE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT
INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR
OTHER RIGHTS.

The name of Princeton University or Princeton may not be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software
and/or database.  Title to copyright in this software, database and
any associated documentation shall at all times remain with
Princeton University and LICENSEE agrees to preserve same.

Frequency word levels

The ready-made word levels for most languages are adapted from FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave, whose lists are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). Changes were made: the lists were filtered to plain words in the language's own letters, with names and offensive words removed, and cut into levels of up to 1,000 words by frequency. Under the ShareAlike condition, the adapted levels in the app's word pack are themselves licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and may be reused under it.

The Azerbaijani, Hausa, Swahili and Tatar levels are word counts over Tatoeba sentences instead, under the licence in the next section.

Example sentences

Example sentences come from Tatoeba, each written by a Tatoeba contributor and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 France licence (CC BY 2.0 FR). The sentences are chosen, not changed. The app's word pack stores each sentence's Tatoeba number and author name with it, and the sentence's own page, tatoeba.org/en/sentences/show/<number>, names its author.

Word filter

Ready-made and AI-made lists leave out offensive words. The list of words to leave out is built from the List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words (CC BY 4.0) and from words that Wiktionary labels offensive or vulgar, read through kaikki.org's Wiktextract data. Wiktionary's text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made to both; the part derived from Wiktionary is under CC BY-SA 4.0.

ZIPA phone recognizer

When you spell aloud, the letters are recognised on your phone by models adapted from ZIPA (anyspeech/zipa-small-crctc-500k, by AnySpeech; github.com/lingjzhu/zipa), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Changes were made: the model is quantized to 8-bit integers, and a second copy was fine-tuned by us for English letter names. Nothing you say leaves the phone.

Language names

The names of the languages, in each language the app is shown in, come from the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR 49), © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc., under the Unicode License v3. Its notice:

UNICODE LICENSE V3

COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION NOTICE

Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc.

NOTICE TO USER: Carefully read the following legal agreement. BY
DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING DATA FILES, AND/OR
SOFTWARE, YOU UNEQUIVOCALLY ACCEPT, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY, ALL OF THE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT
DOWNLOAD, INSTALL, COPY, DISTRIBUTE OR USE THE DATA FILES OR SOFTWARE.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of data files and any associated documentation (the "Data Files") or
software and any associated documentation (the "Software") to deal in the
Data Files or Software without restriction, including without limitation
the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell
copies of the Data Files or Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Data Files or Software are furnished to do so, provided that either (a)
this copyright and permission notice appear with all copies of the Data
Files or Software, or (b) this copyright and permission notice appear in
associated Documentation.

THE DATA FILES AND SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF
THIRD PARTY RIGHTS.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR HOLDERS INCLUDED IN THIS NOTICE
BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, OR ANY SPECIAL INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES,
OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE DATA
FILES OR SOFTWARE.

Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall
not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other
dealings in these Data Files or Software without prior written
authorization of the copyright holder.

Nunito and Nunito Sans

The app and this website are set in two fonts, used under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. Their notices:

The licence is available with a FAQ at openfontlicense.org, and a copy is here: OFL.txt.

fzstd

The app reads newer Anki packages (.apkg files with a collection.anki21b inside) with fzstd, a zstd decoder by Arjun Barrett, under the MIT License:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2020 Arjun Barrett

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Third-party software

The app is built with React Native, Expo and other open-source packages, nearly all under the MIT, BSD, ISC or Apache 2.0 licences. Their notices are reproduced on the third-party software notices page: every npm package found in the app's JavaScript bundles, plus the app's direct dependencies, each with its licence text. The native libraries the Android and iOS builds pull in through Gradle and CocoaPods are not listed there yet.

Questions

A question about a notice, or a request to change one: support@spokenspellingbee.com.