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I heard that the Dewey Decimal System is something you have to pay for a license for in order to legally use. Is that not the case?

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Lol what, its literally just how you order and label your books - doesn't seem like anything someone would charge for even if they could

Yes, they license it.

https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey/resources.html

(Blue box about a third down the page)

I'm a former professional librarian. Left the field in 1985, but have never heard of anyone anywhere paying for use of the dewey decimal system. OCLC services is a different issue. You're paying for their provision of cataloging for your collection.

Here's one instance where they sued over this in the early 2000's.

https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

The issue was with a hotel that numbered their rooms according to the Dewey Decimal System.

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