Creative Commons - Types of Creative Commons Licenses

Types of Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons licenses consist of four major condition modules: Attribution (BY), requiring attribution to the original author; Share Alike (SA), allowing derivative works under the same or a similar license (later or jurisdiction version); Non-Commercial (NC), requiring the work is not used for commercial purposes; and No Derivative Works (ND), allowing only the original work, without derivatives. These modules are combined to currently form six major licenses of the Creative Commons:

• Attribution (CC BY)
• Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
• Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND)
• Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC)
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

As of the current versions, all Creative Commons licenses allow the "core right" to redistribute a work for non-commercial purposes without modification. The NC and ND options will make a work non-free according to the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

An additional special license-like contract is the CC0 option, or "No Rights Reserved." This license dedicates a work to the public domain (or an equivalent status in jurisdictions where a dedication to public domain is not possible). Compared with a "public domain" statement added to the work, a CC0 statement is less ambiguous and achieves the desired effect on a global scale, rather than limited to some jurisdictions.

For software, Creative Commons endorses three free licenses created by other institutions: the BSD License, the CC GNU LGPL license, and the CC GNU GPL.