The Licences
You can find guidance on licensing for software and code or refer to our FAQs on this topic.
Attribution
CC BY
This licence lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licences offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA
This licence lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This licence is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licences. All new works based on yours will carry the same licence, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the licence used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
Attribution-NoDerivs
CC BY-ND
This licence allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC
This licence lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND
This licence is the most restrictive of our six main licences, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
CC0
Creative Commons also provides tools that work in the “all rights granted” space of the public domain. Their CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and our Public Domain Mark allows any web user to “mark” a work as being in the public domain.
GNU General Public Licence
This licence is usually applied to software. It allows others to copy, distribute and modify the software as long as they keep track of the changes in source files and keep modifications under General Public Licence.
Apache v2
This licence is usually applied to software. It gives a lot of freedom to others, including an explicit right to a patent. Any modification to files need to be included in a notice if the software is re-used.
MIT license
This licence is usually applied to software. This is a permissive software licence, allowing others to do whatever they want on the condition that they include the original copyright and licence in subsequent copies.
BSD (3-clause)
This licence is usually applied to software. This allows others almost unlimited freedom to redistribute as long as the BSD copyright notice is included and the names of the original contributors/copyright holders are not used to endorse derived products.
All Rights Reserved
This is a restrictive licence that means the author(s) of the work (e.g. dataset or software) retains all rights over it and it cannot be re-used in any way without explicit permission.
For advice (non-legal) you can email the copyright helpdesk: copyright-help@lib.cam.ac.uk