License provider
Contents
What are the different License providers?
There are five different categories of "License provider". They are:
- CC (Creative Commons)
- FSF (Free Software Foundation)
- public domain
- various
- none
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a nonprofit that offers licenses that are "some rights reserved." For more information, please visit our website: http://creativecommons.org/about/.
What is the Free Software Foundation?
The Free Software Foundation is also a nonprofit that grants licenses for free or open source software. Although they do offer a free documentation license, their primary focus is software. To find out more, visit their website: http://www.fsf.org/about/.
What is the public domain?
Please see our public domain page.
Does "various" mean that there are various license providers for the resources offered on this particular site?
Yes. Generally, we try to reserve this term for large repositories where it is difficult to name all the license providers without going through every single resource. On the other hand, if we know that this site only offers resources from two license providers (say CC and FSF) then we would not mark it "various" but "CC" and "FSF." (If you know the specific license providers, you can check more than one when entering the organization/site.)
What do you mean by "none"?
Essentially, whenever something is created, it defaults to an "all rights reserved" copyright under United States law. See the United States copyright site for more details: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#hsc. In this case, there is no license indicated that would supersede the standard "all rights reserved" copyright; therefore, there is no license provider.
Consequently, whenever the material is copyrighted, please don't check anything under License provider. "None" will show up as a default if nothing is checked.
