Creative Commons is a non-profit organization focused on developing free legal tools to promote the sharing and use of educational resources. The organization's free, easy-to-use copyright licenses have become the standard way to publish for most OER creators. Working alongside copyright, these "CC" licenses allow authors to modify copyright terms to best suit their specific needs. The following guide offers an overview of the wide range of Creative Commons licenses available.

Creative Commons has a wide range of copyright conditions for authors to choose from when creating their license:

Attribution (BY)
Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.

Share-alike (SA)
Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

Non-commercial (NC)
Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.

No Derivative works (ND)
Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.

Public Domain
Release work to the public domain without copyright

Attribution
Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.

Attribution Non-commercial
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 Share-alike
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.

Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike
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 No Derivatives
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 Non-commercial No Derivatives
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 Creative Commons has developed the "Choose a License Tool" to help creators select the most appropriate copyright license for their needs. The tool will also generate an appropriate copyright icon that can be used on webpages or documents. If you still have questions regarding Creative Commons copyright licenses, feel free to contact a librarian for advice.

Copyright License descriptions are taken from Creative Commons under a CC attribution 4.0 license.