Open Licenses
A license is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work. It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one that grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions (definition from Openedefinition.org).
The table below shows the difference between all rights reserved copyright and open license.
All Rights Reserved Copyright | Open License |
It is mine. I do NOT allow you to take this material and repurpose it. You need to ask for permission to use this. | It is mine. But I DO allow you to take my material. Just remember to make a proper attribution to me. It is free, and you do not need to ask for my permission to use it. |
There are many open licenses developed for different areas of knowledge. However, when it comes to open educational resources the most typical and common open licenses used are Creative Commons Licenses.
A bit of background: You have probably heard of an open source license, a type of license for computer software that allows source code to be used, modified and shared under defined terms. The free software movement was launched in 1983. Since then the folks in the computer software world have been widely developing and sharing the open source code with a clear licensing system. Additionally, other open licenses in the computer-related areas have been developed, such as open database licenses and open game licenses.
But what about the rest of the knowledge materials that are not computer program related?
In 2001, inspired by this open source license move in the computer software world, a group of experts comprised of educators, technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and philanthropists gathered together to come up with a set of copyright licenses that would allow creators to easily share materials that were not software code, such as blogs, photos, films, books, etc.
They founded a nonprofit organization called Creative Commons and developed the first set of open licenses in 2002. These Creative Commons licenses brought clarity and ease to sharing materials online.
In summary, there are many open licenses developed for different areas of knowledge. Creative Commons licenses are mostly widely used copyright licenses that would allow creators to easily share materials that were not software code, such as blogs, photos, films, books, etc.
Creative Commons Licenses
What are Creative Commons licenses?
People often say "a picture is worth a thousand words." Sometimes, a well-made video is worth a million words and then some. To understand Creative Commons Licenses, first watch this video that explains the basics behind Creative Commons licenses.
Creative Commons Kiwi by plccanz, available under a CC BY license
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Their free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved." (Definition from Creativecommons.org)
There are four key license elements:
| Others can copy, distribute, perform and remix your work if they credit your name as specified by you. |
| No Derivatives Others can only copy, distribute, or perform verbatim copies of your work. |
| Share Alike Others can distribute your work only under a license identical to the one you have chosen for your work. |
| Non-Commercial Others can copy, distribute, display, perform or remix your work but for non-commercial purposes only. |
Creative Commons licenses are a combination of these elements. There are six of them.
| Attribution (CC BY) This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials. |
| Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you. |
| Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. |
| Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to "copyleft" free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects. |
| Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms. |
| Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially. |
The above text and icons and buttons from "About the Licenses" by Creative Commons, is licensed under a CC BY license
If you want to release your work with a Creative Commons license, watch the videos below.
Creative Commons License Chooser Demo by Sara Morehouse, available under a CC BY license
For further details regarding the marking of different media, visit http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Creators.
What conditions must I meet to release my work with a CC license?
Thus far, we have learned how to mark your work with a CC license. Choosing a CC license was a fast and easy process with a CC license chooser application. However, in order to release your work with a CC license your work should be cleared from all copyright issues. To do so, your work should be one or combination of the following types:
- your original work,
- built from open resources,
- built from works in the public domain,
- built from copyrighted work that you have obtained permission to use, or a combination of the above.
Creating OER and Combining Licenses - Full by TheOGRepository, available under a CC BY license
Note: For any third party materials, whether openly licensed or copyrighted, those materials need to be attributed as not governed by the CC license you chose for your work, but under different terms and by different authors).
If you must use any items that are not openly licensed, please be sure to obtain permission letters from the authors. Please find a sample permission request email.
A sample letter to ask for permission to use the work
Hello Dr. Dumbledore,
I am a faculty member with the ____ project. The purpose of this project is to design openly licensed Science and Technology courses that can be taught face-to-face, hybrid and/or online. These courses will be freely available on the internet for anyone to copy, modify and use. One of the purposes of this project is to offer educational resources to regions where formal educational opportunities are scarce or expensive.
I am creating a course entitled "Advanced Potion" and I would like to use a post from your blog entitled "Why polyjuice potion?" from February 2005.
I am seeking your permission to distribute this material as part of our course. You will maintain your copyright but will be giving us permission to distribute this material for reuse as part of the teaching of this course. We will mostly likely copy the text of your post into a Google document and attribute you. A full citation for the work will accompany it, as will a statement of copyright ownership.
Please contact me at xxxx@hogwarts.edu or by telephone at 253-xxx-xxxx with information about this request. Thank you for your time and attention.
Regards,
Your name
Remember one last thing before licensing:
Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license from using the work according to that license. You can stop offering your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish; but this will not affect the rights associated with any copies of your work already in circulation under a Creative Commons license.
So you need to think carefully when choosing a Creative Commons license to make sure that you are comfortable with your work being used in ways that are consistent with the terms of the license. (text from Before Licensing by Creative Commons, CC BY). This means that derivatives of your work created during the time the license was in effect may continue to circulate even after you have changed the terms of your copyright.
To learn more about basic conditions that you should think about before you apply a Creative Commons license to your work, please read Before Licensing by Creative Commons.