Sharing your work openly on purpose

A teacher finds your free guide and wants to use it with a group that speaks another language. They would like to translate it, change a local example, and print copies. "Please share" sounds welcoming, but it does not tell them whether any of that is allowed. A clear license does: it lets the next person carry on the work you hoped to encourage, without having to ask you first.

A price of zero does not describe the permission

Putting a file online for free tells people they can get it without paying you. It does not tell them whether they may change it, translate it, or hand out copies. Creative Commons licenses give that answer in a standard form, with different conditions for each license. 1 You are choosing what people may do with the work, not whether you charge for the download.

Start with the uses you want to see. Write them down: "translate it", "adapt the examples", "print it for a class", "sell printed copies". A guide you want adapted locally needs a license that allows changes. A work you need to stay exactly as you wrote it, such as a checklist that must stay accurate, points to a license that forbids sharing changed versions.

The letters describe meaningful choices

Every license in the suite requires credit to you (BY). The other letters add conditions:

• CC BY: anyone may share, adapt and build on the work, including commercially, as long as they credit you. 1
• BY-SA (ShareAlike): the same, but anyone who shares an adapted version must license it under the same or a compatible license. 1
• BY-NC (NonCommercial): sharing and adapting are allowed only for noncommercial purposes. 1
• BY-ND (NoDerivatives): people may copy and share the work only in unadapted form. 1
• NC and ND combine with the others into BY-NC-SA and BY-NC-ND. 1
• CC0 is not a license with conditions: you use it when you want to give up all your rights in the work. 3

Apply this to the guide. If you want it translated, do not choose ND: a translation counts as an adaptation, and ND licenses do not allow sharing adaptations. 2 If you are thinking about NC, ask who you want to print, distribute or fund the resource. NonCommercial turns on the use, not on who the user is: a nonprofit's use can still be commercial, and a company's use is not automatically commercial. Creative Commons will not tell anyone which side of the line a use falls on. 2 If a school district or a printing company is exactly who you want to reach, NC may block them.

Share only what you can actually license

You must own or control the copyright in what you license. If you made the work for an employer, your employer may own it; get their permission before you apply a CC license. 3 A guide often mixes your writing with photographs, logos, or contributions from other people. Your CC license applies only to the rights you hold. 2 Do not put a blanket license notice on the cover. Mark clearly which parts are under the CC license and which are not, and name the separate terms for the parts that are not. 2

A CC license covers copyright. It does not license trademark or patent rights, or the publicity, personality and privacy rights of other people. 2 If a photo in your guide shows a recognizable person, licensing the photo does not give reusers that person's permission. For software, Creative Commons recommends against its licenses: use an established software license, and keep CC for the documentation, art or music that goes with it. 2

Make the permission easy to carry with the work

Do it in this order:

1. Choose the license. Use the Creative Commons license chooser. It asks whether you require credit, allow commercial use, allow adaptations, and require adaptations to be shared alike, and it makes you confirm that you own or may license the work. 4
2. Add your credit details. The chooser takes your title, your name, and links to the work and to you, so people can credit you correctly. 4
3. Copy the marking. The chooser gives you the license notice as rich text or HTML for the web and as plain text for print, for a title page, copyright page or credits. 4
4. Place it where people will see it. Name the license and version and link to the license deed, in a place that makes clear what the license covers: next to a single work, or at the bottom of a page that holds several. 3 4
5. Put it inside the file. If the guide travels as a PDF or on paper, put the statement and link in the document itself. A notice that exists only on your website stays behind when the file is shared. 2

Choose knowing you cannot take it back. CC licenses and CC0 are irrevocable: once you apply a license, it applies to the work until its copyright expires. 3 You can stop distributing the work, but anyone who already has a copy can keep sharing it under the license. 2 CC licenses are non-exclusive. You can still sell the work yourself and offer it to others under additional terms, but those terms cannot cancel the CC license, and they bind only the people who sign them. 2 So do not promise a future partner exclusive rights to anything you have already licensed openly. Open sharing is a deliberate use of your rights, and its value is the confidence it gives people to use your work the way you meant to allow.