ESC OER Taskforce/Open Licensing

A license is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work (whether sound, text, image or multimedia). It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one which grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.

The most commonly used liceses are Creative Commons Licenses. These licenses provides the means for creators to easily share their content in the way that they prefer and provides a blueprint for users of open content to ensure they are utilizing the works in the way the creator intended.