In some cases, you may wish to be more explicit about the permissions you are assigning. This can be useful for:
1) alerting users to your copyright and making its restrictive conditions more explicit.
2) enabling you to share your work more openly but by specifying the extent of any limits more precisely.
Open licensing provides a simple, standardised way for authors to grant copyright permissions to their creative work, providing clarity around precisely what is permitted and what is not. The most well known as the suite of Creative Commons licenses, sometimes referred to as "CC-BY licensing" for short. However "CC-BY" (a reuse By Attribution license) is actually just one of many options available.
A handy 'at a glance' summary table is available or you can read a description of the main ones below:
If the work is using CC licensing, a standard abbreviation symbol will be shown which provides shorthand for what is allowed and not allowed.
CC-BY requires proper acknowledgement or attribution
CC-BY SA stands for Share Alike, permitting others to remix, adapt, and build upon the work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author and license in their new creations under the identical terms.
CC-BY NC stands for Non-Commercial, permitting others to remix, adapt, and build upon the work non-commercially, again as long as the author is acknowledged.
CC-BY ND stands for No Derivatives, permitting you to reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in an adapted form, and the author must be credited.
These Attributes may also be combined together so it is important to familiarise yourself with all the permutations to be sure you are fully complaint with the intended reuse terms.
