Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/) is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. The licenses provide a simple standard way to give the public permission to use and share work.
The Licenses
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.
Use the Creative Commons License Chooser to add the CC license notice to your work.
"Creative Commons License Chooser" by Creative Commons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CC BY 4.0
- Marking Your Work With A Creative Commons LicenseYou have chosen a CC license for your work. Now how do you go about letting the world know? Here are some examples of how to mark your work with the CC license.
- Open Attribution BuilderUse this tool from Open Washington to help you build attributions and cite open material you find and use.
- Best Practices for AttributionTips and examples from Creative Commons.
"Creative Commons Explained" by Christa DeVirgilio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
"What is Creative Commons?" by Victor Grigas, Wikimedia Foundation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.