A public license or public copyright licenses is a license by which a copyright holder as licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to any and all persons in the general public as licensees. By applying a public license to a work, provided that the licensees obey the terms and conditions of the license, copyright holders give permission for others to copy or change their work in ways that would otherwise infringe copyright law. Some public licenses, such as the

GNU GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

and the CC BY-SA, are also considered free or open copyright licenses. However, other public licenses like the CC BY-NC are not open licenses, because they contain restrictions on commercial or other types of use. Public copyright licenses do not limit their licensees. In other words, any person can take advantage of the license. The former

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

(CC) ''Developing Nations License'' was not a public copyright license, because it limited licensees to those in developing nations. Current Creative Commons licenses are explicitly identified as public licenses. Any person can apply a CC license to their work, and any person can take advantage of the license to use the licensed work according to the terms and conditions of the relevant license. According to the Open Knowledge Foundation, a public copyright license does not limit licensors either. Under this definition, license contract texts specific to a single licensor (like the UK government’s Open Government License, which would have to be edited to be used by other licensors) are not considered public copyright licenses, although they may qualify as open licenses. Some organisations approve public copyright licenses that meet certain criteria, in particular being free or open licenses. The

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

keeps a list of FSF-approved software licenses and free documentation licenses. The

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...

keeps a similar list of OSI-approved software licenses. The Open Knowledge Foundation has a list of OKFN-approved licenses for content and data licensing.

Types of copyright license

The

implied license An implied license is an unwritten license which permits a party (the licensee) to do something that would normally require the express permission of another party (the licensor). Implied licenses may arise by operation of law from actions by th ...

imposed by the Berne Convention, and the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

(the CC0 license as

waiver A waiver is the voluntary relinquishment or surrender of some known right or privilege. Regulatory agencies of state departments or the federal government may issue waivers to exempt companies from certain regulations. For example, a United St ...

), are the references for any other public license. Considering all cultural works, as in the

Open Definition The Open Definition is a document published by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) (previously Open Knowledge International) to define openness in relation to data and content. It specifies what licences for such material may and may not stipula ...

, the

four freedoms The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freed ...

summarizes the main differences: The "open licenses" preserve the main freedoms of CC0, but add some reasonable restriction. Labeling by its acronyms, the main restrictions are: * BY (''attribution''): restriction on freedoms 2, 3 or 2.1, the copy must to cite (attribute); give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these. * SA (''share-alike''): restriction on freedoms 2 or 3, the copy must distributed under a license identical to the license that governs the original work (see

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

). * ND (''Non-derivative''): exclusion of freedom 3. * NC (''Non-commercial''): partial exclusion of freedoms 2 and 3 of commercial purposes. * Other: other less usual restrictions on "open licenses".

Varieties of public copyright license

Free licenses are a popular subset of public copyright licenses. They include free and open source software licenses and free content licenses. To qualify as a libre license, a public copyright license must allow licensees to share and adapt the licensed work for any purpose, including commercial ones. Licenses that purport to release a work into the public domain are a type of libre license.

Share-alike Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copy ...

licenses require derivatives of the licensed work to be released under the same license as the original. When a libre license has a share-alike term, it is called a

license. Libre licenses without share-alike terms are sometimes called

permissive license A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, ...

s. The Creative Commons public copyright license suite includes licenses with attribution, share-alike, non-commercial and no-derivatives conditions. It also offers a public domain license and the

Founders' Copyright Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

license. Open supplement licenses permit derivatives of the work (specifically material that supplements the original work) but not duplicates.

Public domain like licenses

A subset of public copyright licenses which aim for no restrictions at all like

("full permissive"), are ''public domain-like licenses''. The 2000 released

WTFPL WTFPL is a permissive free software license. As a public domain like license, the WTFPL is essentially the same as dedication to the public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifest ...

license is a short public domain like

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...

. The 2009 released

CC0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

was created as public domain license for all content with

compatibility Compatibility may refer to: Computing * Backward compatibility, in which newer devices can understand data generated by older devices * Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device * Compatibility layer, compon ...

with also law domains (e.g. Civil law of

continental Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by ...

) where ''dedicating into public domain'' is problematic. This is achieved by a public domain waiver statement and a fall-back all-

.Validity of the Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and its usability for bibliographic metadata from the perspective of German Copyright Law
by Dr. Till Kreutzer, attorney-at-law in

Berlin, Germany Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituent ...

The

Unlicense The Unlicense is a public domain equivalent license for software which provides a public domain waiver with a fall-back public-domain-like license, similar to the CC Zero for cultural works. It includes language used in earlier software projects a ...

, published around 2010, has a focus on an

anti-copyright Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implem ...

message. The Unlicense offers a public domain waiver text with a fall-back public domain-like license inspired by permissive licenses but without attribution.The Unlicense
on unlicense.org

Types of copyright license

Varieties of public copyright license

Public domain like licenses

See also

References