Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a set of terms that the content creators can choose to apply to their work to indicate how they would like their work to be used by others – to be cited, adapted, re-distributed, and/or used for commercial purposes.
There are six types of CC licenses - from the most accommodating, CC-BY, under which people can use the work however they want as long as they cite the work, to the most restrictive, CC-BY-NC-ND, indicating that the work can neither be adapted nor be used for commercial purposes. The most current version of CC licenses is version 4.0. In addition to the six CC licenses, content creators can also dedicate their work to the public domain, CC0.
| License type | Free to share (Copy & re-distribute) | Free to adapt (Remix, transform or build upon) & re-distribute | Free to use for commercial purposes | Must attribute (give credit) | Must share alike (use same license if adapted) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Public Domain or PD or CC0
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No^ |
No |
|
Attribution only or CC BY
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Attribution-ShareAlike or CC-BY-SA
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Attribution-NoDerivatives or CC BY-ND
|
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
- |
|
Attribution-NonCommercial
|
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike or CC BY-NC-SA
|
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives or CC BY-NC-ND
|
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
- |
^ Under CC0, the need for attribution is not bound by legal requirements, but can be based on ethical and professional norms.
For more about CC licenses, refer to: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
