License type
Different organizations license their resources in different ways. Licenses, in general, tell you how you can use the material. Some types are more restrictive than others. Here, we've classified the different license types. Most organizations license their work according to one or more of these seven types:
- copyright
- CC copyright
- GNU copyright
- FLOSS
- government license
- public domain
- various
What is copyright?
Copyright is simply a blanket license term for any work that is not in the public domain. Public domain is "no rights reserved"; copyright is some or all rights reserved, depending on the type of copyright.
What do you mean by the license type "copyright" as opposed to the other types?
By copyright, we usually mean "all rights reserved" or fully restricted copyright--for example, under United States' law: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html. This type of copyright only allows fair use, which delegates certain open uses of the work for certain purposes (i.e. non-commercial or educational). Some copyrighted material, however, is "all rights reserved" with certain allowances beyond fair use--these exceptions are specifically tailored for that material in extra clauses, usually in the site's legal notices. For simplicity's sake, we still regard these as falling under "copyright" because it is still some form of the "all rights reserved" copyright, with exceptions.
