Creative Commons: "About the Licenses"
Read this page, which explains the different types of licenses Creative Commons has made available to copyright holders. As indicated in the Hewlett Foundation’s definition, a key element of the OER movement has been the adoption and use of alternative licenses that enable the free use or repurposing of educational content. To this end, Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that “develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation,” has released several licenses that enable copyright holders to articulate the rights they wish to reserve for themselves while waiving others. These licenses provide copyright holders with a way of licensing their work such that they enable and encourage others to share, promote, remix, and/or build on their work. All Saylor courses are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License and all resources linked within Saylor courses must be public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons, GNU, or other license that explicitly allows broad republication and redistribution. Open resources allow Saylor to host (and in many cases revise) course materials so students can have unfettered access. Additionally, licensing our courses CC BY allows and encourages adoption and reuse by those in many other learning contexts.