The Definition of Free Cultural Works evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses.

History

The Open Content Project by David A. Wiley in 1998 was a predecessor project which defined

open content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...

. In 2003, Wiley joined the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

as "Director of Educational Licenses" and announced the Creative Commons and their

licenses A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

as successors to his Open Content Project. Therefore, Creative Commons' Erik Möller in collaboration with

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvar ...

, Benjamin Mako Hill, Angela Beesley, and others started in 2006 the Free Cultural Works project for defining

free content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content for which there are very minimal copyright and other legal limi ...

. The first draft of the ''Definition of Free Cultural Works'' was published 2 April 2006. The 1.0 and 1.1 versions were published in English and translated into several languages. The ''Definition of Free Cultural Works'' is used by the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

. In 2008, the Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons licenses were marked as "Approved for Free Cultural Works". Following in June 2009,

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

migrated to use two licenses: the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike as main license, additionally to the previously used

GNU Free Documentation License The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights ...

(which was made compatible). An improved

license compatibility License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requireme ...

with the greater free content ecosystem was given as reason for the license change. In October 2014, the

Open Knowledge Foundation Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge, England. It is incorporated in Engla ...

's Open Definition 2.0 for ''Open Works'' and ''Open Licenses'' described "open" as synonymous to the definition of free in the "Definition of Free Cultural Works" (and also the

Open Source Definition ''The Open Source Definition'' (OSD) is a policy document published by the Open Source Initiative. Derived from the Debian Free Software Guidelines written by Bruce Perens, the definition is the most common standard for open-source software. ...

and Free Software Definition). A distinct difference is the focus given to the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

and that it focuses also on the accessibility ("

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

") and the readability ("

open format An open file format is a file format for storing digital data, defined by an openly published specification usually maintained by a standards organization, and which can be used and implemented by anyone. An open file format is licensed with a ...

s"). The same three creative commons licenses are recommended for

(

CC BY A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

CC BY-SA A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

, and CC0) as additionally three for

open data Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...

intended own licenses, the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL), the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) and the

Open Data Commons Open Database License The Open Database License (ODbL) is a copyleft license agreement intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use a database while maintaining this same freedom for others. ODbL is published by Open Data Commons, which is part of Open Kn ...

(ODbL).

"Free cultural works" approved licenses

* Against DRM * BSD-like non-copyleft licenses * CERN Open Hardware License * CC0 *

Creative Commons Attribution A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

(CC BY) * Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) * Design Science License *

Free Art License The Free Art License (FAL) () is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works except for computer hardware and software, including for commercial use. History The license was written in Ju ...

FreeBSD Documentation License The FreeBSD Documentation License is the license that covers most of the documentation for the FreeBSD operating system. License The license is very similar to the 2-clause Simplified BSD License used by the support of FreeBSD, however, it makes t ...

(without invariant sections)licenses
on freedomdefined.org *

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

* MirOS Licence *

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

* Open Publication License

References

External links

* Definition of Free Cultural Works on freedomdefined.org * 2006 Announcement on freedomdefined.org
Understanding Free Cultural Works
on creativecommons.org
Free content defined
on WikiEducator
FreeCulturalWorks
on

DeviantArt DeviantArt (formerly styled as deviantART and thus abbreviated as dA) is an American online community that features artwork, videography, photography, and literature, launched on August 7, 2000, by Mathew Stephens, Scott Jarkoff and Angelo Sotir ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Definition Of Free Cultural Works Computer-related introductions in 2006