Licensing
Everything published here is licensed so that it stays free. This page says what that means in practice.
At a glance
| What | Licence | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Companion datasets and chart data (CSV, JSON) | CC BY 4.0 | Credit SparkyData and link to the licence |
| Chart images (PNG, SVG) and embedded charts | CC BY 4.0 | Keep the credit line and the link to the article |
| Cover illustrations | CC BY 4.0 | Credit SparkyData and link to the article |
| Analysis code | MIT | Keep the notice |
| Article text | © SparkyData | Quote it with attribution, as any publication |
Data: CC BY 4.0
Every article's companion dataset and chart data are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. You may copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build on them for any purpose, including commercially, on one condition: credit SparkyData and link to the licence. Once something is published under CC BY it stays available under it permanently — the licence cannot be withdrawn, and we would not want to.
Three layers sit inside most companion datasets, and the licence applies to the part SparkyData made. Underlying government microdata (Census Bureau public-use files, for instance) is a U.S. Government work in the public domain; we redistribute it as published, and nothing here adds a restriction to it. Columns SparkyData derived — estimated taxes, assigned budgets, classifications, weights carried through — are what CC BY 4.0 covers. Synthetic records, where an article ships them, are SparkyData's and likewise CC BY 4.0.
Code: MIT
The analysis scripts that ship with articles are published under the MIT licence, which is the right tool for software where Creative Commons is not. Use them however you like; keep the notice.
How to credit
A line like this, wherever you would normally cite a source, is enough:
SparkyData, "The six-figure renter", 2026. Data CC BY 4.0, code MIT.
https://sparkydata.dev/articles/six-figure-renterArticles
Article text is © SparkyData; quote it with attribution as you would any publication. Charts, chart images, embedded charts and cover illustrations are CC BY 4.0, like the data: reuse them with a credit and a link to the article.
The Terms govern use of this website. They do not narrow any right these licences grant: where a licence and the Terms appear to conflict over a published file, the licence wins. The Terms' notices about what the data can and cannot truthfully support are warnings about fitness for purpose, not conditions of the licence, and they do not travel with the files.
What the data is
- Most companion datasets are public-use microdata or aggregates derived from U.S. Government works — chiefly the Census Bureau's American Community Survey public-use microdata — cut to the article's universe and carrying the article's derived variables. Their original terms of use continue to apply.
- Where an article uses SparkyData's synthetic population, the article says so. Public-use microdata are disclosure-protected records derived from survey responses, published by the issuing agency so that no respondent can be identified; synthetic records are generated by SparkyData and correspond to no real person, household or address. Neither may be used to identify anyone.
- No dataset published here may be used as a factual record of, or the basis for any decision about, any real person. See the Terms.
- This product uses Census Bureau data but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau. Do not represent it as official statistics.
Questions
For anything about licensing, or to ask about a use the licence does not obviously cover, write to sparkytech.dev@gmail.com.