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photo: Łukasz Bożycki

Creative Commons Licences

Legal licences to replace the traditional “All Rights Reserved” model with “Some Rights Reserved” – while respecting copyright principles. Creative Commons licences offer a diverse set of licensing terms – freedoms and restrictions. This allows the author to determine for themselves the rules under which they wish to share their work with others. CC licence terms can be combined with each other.

The four basic terms of the CC license

The most common combinations of licencing conditions

CC BY

This license allows others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they give you credit for the original work. This is the most generous license offered. Recommended for maximum distribution and use of licensed materials.


CC BY-SA

This license allows others to remix, adapt and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new work under identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” and open source software licenses. All new works based on your license will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia and is recommended for material that would benefit from content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.


CC BY-ND

This license allows others to reuse the work for any purpose, including commercial purposes; however, it cannot be shared with others in an adapted form, and credit must be given to you.


CC BY-NC

This licence allows others to remix, adapt and build on your non-commercial work, and while their new work must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they do not have to license their derivative works under the same terms.


CC BY-NC-SA

This license allows others to remix, adapt and use your non-commercial work, as long as they credit you and license their new works under identical terms


CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six licenses. It only allows you to download a work and share it with others, as long as authorship is acknowledged and the work is not modified or commercially exploited.