Understanding Open Licensing

License defined

A license is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work (whether sound, text, image or multimedia). It grants permissions and states restrictions. An open license is one which grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.

Open License defined

Open Licenses are a set of conditions applied to an original work that grant permission for anyone to make use of that work as long as they follow the conditions of the license. Open license or free license can be defined as a license agreement which contains provisions that allow other individuals to reuse another creator's work, giving them four major freedoms. Without a special license, the user is normally prohibited by copyright law or commercial license. For example, a piece of writing on a website made available under an open license would be free for anyone to:

  • print out and share,
  • publish on another website or in print,
  • make alterations or additions,
  • incorporate, in part or in whole, into another piece of writing,
  • use as the basis for a work in another medium - such as an audio recording or a film,
  • and do many other things …

Open licenses therefore give permission to anyone to use the work at no cost, and generally allow anyone to modify the work with no or minimal restriction (such as acknowledging the original author’s work).

Types of Open Licenses

Now let’s look at some types of open licenses. There are several types of Open licenses but we will be focusing on the Creative Commons (CC) license.

Focus on the Creative Common License

A CC license is used when a creator wants others to share, use, and build upon a work that has been created by the creator. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

There are several types of Creative Commons license. Each license differs by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001. There have also been five versions of the suite of licenses, numbered 1.0 through 4.0.Released in November 2013; the 4.0 license suite is the most current.

The Four rights of CC license

Icon

Right

Description
Attribution

Attribution (BY)

Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works and remixes based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits (attribution) in the manner specified by these. Since version 2.0, all Creative Commons licenses require attribution to the creator and include the BY element.
share alike

Share-alike (SA)

Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to ("not more restrictive than") the license that governs the original work. Without share-alike, derivative works might be sublicensed with compatible but more restrictive license clauses, e.g. CC BY to CC BY-NC.) This license is also known as copyleft.
Non commercial

Non-commercial (NC)

Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works and remixes based on it only for non-commercial purposes.
No derivatives

No derivative works (ND)

Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works and remixes based on it. Since version 4.0, derivative works are allowed but must not be shared.














3.4.3.3: The six different types of CC Licence

There are six different license types, listed from most to least permissive here:

CC by CC BY: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.

·         CC BY includes the following elements:
BY tinyman icon – Credit must be given to the creator

CC by SA  CC BY-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

·         CC BY-SA includes the following elements:
BY tiny man1  – Credit must be given to the creator
SA small c – Adaptations must be shared under the same terms

 

CC by NC CC BY-NC: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

·         It includes the following elements:
BY tiny man 2 – Credit must be given to the creator
NC tiny non commercial icon – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted

 

CC BY NC SA CC BY-NC-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. 

·         CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements:
BY Tiny man 3 – Credit must be given to the creator
NC Tiny non commercial – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
SA Small c icon – Adaptations must be shared under the same terms

 

CC BY ND CC BY-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. 

·         CC BY-ND includes the following elements:
BY tiny man – Credit must be given to the creator
ND Small ND icon – No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

 

CC BY NC ND CC BY-NC-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

·         CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
BY tiny man icon – Credit must be given to the creator
NC small non commercial icon – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
ND small ND – No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

Also note the following:

Public Domain Icon CC0 (aka CC Zero) is a public dedication tool, which allows creators to give up their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain. CC0 allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, with no conditions.

Seven regularly used licenses

The seven licenses in most frequent use are shown in the following table. Among them, those accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation – the public domain dedication and two attribution (BY and BY-SA) licenses – allow the sharing and remixing (creating derivative works), including for commercial use, so long as attribution is given.

Table by Wikimedia 

License name

Abbreviation

Icon

Attribution required

Allows remix culture

Allows commercial use

Allows Free Cultural Works

Meets the OKF 'Open Definition'

"No Rights Reserved"

CC0

Public domain icon

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Attribution

BY


CC BY icon

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Attribution-ShareAlike

BY-SA

CC BY SA icon

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Attribution-NonCommercial

BY-NC

BY NC icon

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

BY-NC-SA

BY NC SA icon

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

Attribution-NoDerivatives

BY-ND

CC BY ND icon

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

BY-NC-ND

CC BY NC ND

Yes

No

No

No

No


















 


Last modified: Monday, 25 April 2022, 7:08 PM