0.4 Oer licensing and conditions of use  (Page 3/4)

Sharing your work

Here is a recap of how to license material you created and want to share in OER Commons using a Creative Commons’license:

• Determine whether you can use a Creative Commons license for your work.
• If necessary, replace or remove content that you do not have permission to use. Or get permission from the author(s) who hold the copyright.
• Login to OER Commons and click on OER Matters . This will take you to the page where the submission forms are located.
• Complete the submission form, and decide which Creative Commons license you would like to use. The top-level choice is the most current Creative Commons license. You can choose an older license by clicking on the + icon next to“show/hide other Creative Commons licenses.
• After you click the“Save”button on the bottom of the submission form, the license you chose will be attached to the material you submitted.

To see the item you submitted with the license you chose, go to your OER Portfolio . You’ll need to be logged into OER Commons to view your portfolio. Once you are in your portfolio, click the link called“Items I have submitted.”Find the name of the item you submitted and click on its link. Look under“Conditions of Use”to see your license.

Gnu free document license

GNU Free Document license is another way to license your work for others to use. The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) has been designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The GFDL was intended for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation for GNU and open source software. However, it can be used for any text-based work of any subject matter. For example, Wikipedia uses the GFDL for all of its text.

The GFDL license grants rights to readers and users of materials to copy, share, redistribute and modify a work. It requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially. There are specific requirements for modifying works involving crediting the creator of the work and for distributing large numbers of copies.

Here is one example of an item from OER Commons that uses the GNU Free Document license.

Custom/other

Custom License is used to describe the terms granted and restrictions imposed by the copyright holder for a work covered by copyright in order to provide a clear alternative to“All Rights Reserved.”It simply allows the creator of a work to state conditions for which educators and learners may view, use, share, re-distribute, or modify a work. Allowing“use for educational purposes only,”for example, grants a reader or user of a work the opportunity to use it in a classroom or for personal learning or research purposes without needing to ask permission or pay a fee. Permission to alter a work may be prohibited or not, and the conditions may be specifically described. Commercial use may also be prohibited and can specifically be stated as such.

Non-compatibility of Licenses

The differing requirements and restrictions of Creative Commons (CC), GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and Custom-licensed or Copyrighted (All Rights Reserved) materials, make these licenses incompatible with each other. Combining content across license type is still a legal and technical obstacle for creating thoroughly remixable content.