Open Education Handbook/Open Licences

The definition used in the Open Definition effectively limits open content to libre content; any free content license would qualify as an open content license. According to this narrower criteria, the following still-maintained licenses qualify:


 * Creative Commons Licenses: only Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), Attribution-Share Alike (CC BY SA)
 * Creative Commons Public Domain Tools: CC Zero (not a license but a tool that allows creators to dedicate their works to the public domain)
 * Open Publication License (the original license of the Open Content Project, the Open Content License, did not permit for-profit copying of the licensed work and therefore does not qualify)
 * Against DRM license
 * GNU Free Documentation License
 * Open Game License (a license designed for role-playing games by Wizards of the Coast)
 * Free Art License

In addition to Open Definition aligned licenses, more copyright licenses exist. For example, the full suite of Creative Commons licenses are outlined at http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Below are the CC licenses as aligned to a spectrum from Least Open to Most Open. Examples of use for each license are provided at http://creativecommons.org/examples.



Further resources

 * Open content licensing for educators
 * Software Licenses in Plain English
 * Creative Commons FAQ
 * Creative Commons Toolkit
 * Open.Michigan guide to releasing content
 * P2PU course - Get CC Savvy