An open license lets people remix and reuse your work while preserving your copyright. In others words, an open license allows people to use your work, but depending on the type, people can utilize your work freely in different ways. Creative Commons (CC) licensing is a well-known open license. Under Creative Commons, individuals can share and adapt works as long as they credit the author, provide a link to the license, and indicate if they changed anything.
There are six different types of Creative Commons licences. Below there will be a list of each type and a brief description of what each one grants.
CC BY: Atributtion (BY). Through this licensing you get the most permissions when people use your work, as long as they give credit, they can modify, remix, and build upon it. They can use your work even commercially
CC BY-SA: ShareAlike (SA). Your work can be distributed, changed, remixed, or built upon, as long as they credit you. People should distribute their work with the same type of licensing.
CC BY-NC: Non-Commercial (NC): Similiar to the previous one but they cannot use it for commercial purposes except to recupere the costs.
CC BY-NC-SA: Share-Alike (SA): Similar to the previous one but you cannot use it to recupere the costs that you incurred.
CC BY-ND: NoDerivatives (ND): You can redistribute it commercially or non-commercially as long as it's passed along unchanged and in its entirety with credit to you.
CC BY-NC-ND: The most restrictive of the six main Creative Commons licenses, allowing redistribution. As long as individuals credit you, they are free to download and share your work but they cannot change anything or use it commercially.
When I went through all the readings for our class this week, I felt a bit overwhelmed. Open licensing is a complex topic with many nuances. However, I believe it’s important to have a good understanding of your copyrights for the work you create, as well as the works you use, modify, and share. Those concepts can be mastered with a little work.
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