Creative Commons licences work as “Some rights reserved” rule instead of “All rights reserved” rule. CC offers a diverse set of licence conditions – the freedoms and limitations. This allows the author to define rules on which he or she would like to share his or her creations with others. At the same time users gain more rights to the use of his or her works.
Attribution 4.0 – This licence lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licences offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 – This licence lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and licence their new creations under the identical terms. This licence is often compared to “copyright” free and open source software licences. All new works based on yours will carry the same licence, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the licence used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 – This licence 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–NoDerivs 4.0 – This licence allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 4.0 – This licence 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-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 – This licence is the most restrictive of our six main licences, 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.
This is an adaptation of the poster Open poster about CC licences by Creative Commons Poland, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Poland licence.
This Quick Guide to Creative Commons was created by National Copyright Unit, Education Council and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.