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-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-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
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-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-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.
Open educational resources, like all intellectual property, are subject to the laws of copyright. But some creators would rather share their work than reserve all of their rights for themselves. Creative Commons has created tools that allow creators of copyrightable work the ability to do this within the framework of copyright laws as they exist now. Creative Commons licenses are real, legal licenses that help creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work.
The Licenses Page shows what the different license terms are in an easy-to read way.
The Choose a License Tool provides an easy way for creators to define the terms on which others may use their work.
This page shows the best way to give attribution for a Creative Commons licensed work.
OER may also be used from the public domain (works for which copyright has expired), fair use (such as using small parts of works for educational purposes), or library resources (when you are able to direct your students to use a library resource instead of having them buy it).
For more details on the way OER works within copyright, see the Copyright, Fair Use and Licensing for OER module.