Creative Commons for Open Projects: Creative Commons Licenses

The details of Creative Commons license elements and Creative Commons licenses are below. Refer back to this page as you use, adapt, and share content.

Creative Commons licenses are built on four license elements:

BY Attribution: The creator must be credited

NC NonCommercial: Work can only be used for noncommercial purposes

SA Share Alike: Adaptations can only be shared with the same CC license

ND No Derivatives: Adaptations cannot be shared

There are six Creative Commons licenses based on the four license elements. All Creative Commons licenses require attribution.

  CC BY Attribution: The creator must be credited.

   CC BY-SA Attribution-ShareAlike: The creator must be credited and adaptations must be shared under the same (or a compatible) license. CC BY-NC Attribution-NonCommercial: The creator must be credited and the work can only be used for non-commercial purposes.

   CC BY-NC-SA Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: The creator must be credited and the work can only be used for non-commercial purposes. Adaptations must be shared under the same (or a compatible) license

   CC BY-ND Attribution-NoDerivatives: The creator must be credited and adaptations of the work cannot be shared publicly.

   CC BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives: The creator must be credited and the work can only be used for non-commercial purposes. Adaptations of the work cannot be shared publicly.

Read more about the CC licenses, with links to the full legal text, on the Creative Commons website, About CC Licenses.

"Creative Commons for Open Projects" by Denise Hattwig (2023) is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.