View source for If the OER is licensed CC-BY-NC (or CC-BY-NC-SA), does that mean that it can only be used for educational purposes?

{{CcLearn FAQ
|Question=If the OER is licensed CC-BY-NC (or CC-BY-NC-SA), does that mean that it can only be used for educational purposes?
|Document=Applying Creative Commons licenses to your educational resources, Publishing Your Open Educational Resources on the Internet, Increase Funding Impact, Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons Licensing
|Target audience=learners
|Tag=OER, noncommercial
}}
No. There are no “educational use only” license terms in OER. A user must simple comply with the above terms: attribute the author (BY), use for only noncommercial purposes (NC), (and, if marked SA (Share Alike), re-license any derivatives in the same manner as the original). As with any legal principle, the NC term is not strictly defined, thus leaving some latitude for interpretation to the users. On the one hand, this can be frustrating, and clarification of the NC term is a frequent request, which is certainly one of the motivations for our planned study of this issue in the near future. On the other hand, the latitude makes it possible for the community to explore the ways in which the spirit of the NC term can be upheld even if there is money changing hands, such as with free but ad-supported sites, or in cost-recovery (as opposed to for-profit) models. While there are a few organizations involved in open education who apply a very strict interpretation to the NC term ( i.e., no monetary transactions allowed at all), most organizations focus on the intent of the transaction…. if the intent is not to make money, but rather just to support operating costs, for example, then the NC term may not be violated. This latter definition makes the most sense to many given that educational materials are clearly fundamental to the educational system, which students pay for. If the NC term were to negate the possibility for all financial transactions, then we might not even be able to use these materials in public school systems.

All of that said, in the interest of maximizing interoperability, ccLearn recommends that, wherever possible, OER should be released under the most permissive license possible: CC-BY. On the other hand, a very good reason for the NC term is when there are third-party materials involved, in which case it likely that the only way to get the materials released openly is to apply the NC term. These issues are all being actively considered by ccLearn and partners; check back to this site for additional information as things develop.