We love open source because it enables the sharing of creativity, allowing others to find inspiration and learn from your work. If you want your work to be freely shared, used and built upon by the rest of the world, while at the same time, protect your intellectual property, you can choose a Creative Commons license that defines what others can and can’t do with your open source sketches.
Here is a breakdown of the various licenses from the least restrictive to the most.
The Attribution License (BY) lets others distribute, alter and build upon your sketches both commercially and non-commercially, as long as they credit you for the original work.
The Attribution ShareAlike (BY-SA) license lets others alter and build upon your sketches both commercially and non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their work under identical terms as the original. This means that all new sketches based on yours should be open source and carry the same or a compatible license.
The Attribution NoDerivatives (BY-ND) license lets others reuse your sketches for any purpose, including commercially; however, you must be given credit, and no modified versions can be shared or distributed.
The Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC) license lets others adapt and build upon your sketches non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license the derivatives of your sketches on the same terms.
The Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) is the default license on OpenProcessing. This license lets others alter, adapt, and build upon your work. Others are free to use it non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their work under the identical terms or with a compatible license.
The most restrictive of the six licenses, Attribution Noncommercial NoDerivatives (BY-NC-ND), only allows others to use your sketches as long as they give you credit, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially and if they transform or build upon this material they cannot distribute it.
When you are saving your sketch, you can select the type of license as below.
Once set, the license will be displayed prominently when someone visits your sketch. This ensures that everyone understands the rights of use for your sketches.
Finally, to make it easier to change the license of your sketches all at once, we added a batch license changing feature. Click on "Edit Profile" on your profile page, and "Advanced Settings" to find this feature. There, you can select a Creative Commons license and apply the it to all of your sketches at once.
To nourish your curiosity and find out more about licensing, visit Creative Commons.