What is a Creative Commons License?
From their website, "Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the re-user’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work?"
Let's go over each of the standard Creative Commons licensing for open sourced materials. We'll sort them by least restrictive to most restrictive. All sourcing is from the Creative Commons website.
1. CC BY 4.0: This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes.
2. CC BY-SA 4.0: Adding the "SA" to the CC-BY means we're adding a "Share-Alike" component to this open license. All that means is that if someone wants to use this work, not only must content credit be given to the author, but any adaptions must be shared under the same terms. Just like the previous CC-BY 4.0 license, "this license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes." Simply--feel free to make changes or revisions, just make sure when you share your work, it's under the same Creative Commons structure as the original work.
3. CC BY-ND 4.0: "ND" stands for "No Derivatives". This license prohibits any adaptations or derivatives to the work. Credit must be given to the author and also shared in the same format and same copyright license as the original work.
4. CC BY-NC 4.0: "NC" stands for "Non-Commercial". This license prohibits using this work for commercial purposes. These kinds of licenses allow changes to be made to the original work, as long as the work is for educational or non for profit purposes. "Noncommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation."
5. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 --now we mix and match! For this license, credit must be given to the creator, for non-commericial use only, and also use the same licensing terms as the original. Adaptations can be freely made under these provisions.
6. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 --For this license, credit must be given to the creator, for non-commercial use only, and no derivatives or changes can be made--only shared in the exact same version as the original.
