The Definition of Free Cultural Works is a definition of free content from 2006. The project evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses.

History

The

Open Content Project The Open Content Project was a project dedicated to free culture and Creative Commons. One goal was to evangelize the concept of open content. The project's Open Publication License, primarily designed and offered for academics, could easily ...

David A. Wiley David A. Wiley is an American academic, writer who is the chief academic officer of Lumen Learning, education fellow at Creative Commons, and former adjunct faculty of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, where he ...

in 1998 was a predecessor project which defined open content. 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 as successors to his Open Content Project. Therefore, Creative Commons' Erik Möller in collaboration with Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig,

Benjamin Mako Hill Benjamin Mako Hill is a free software activist, hacker, author, and professor. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the co-author of three technical manuals on the subject, ''Debia ...

, Angela Beesley, and others started in 2006 the Free Cultural Works project for defining free content. 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. In 2008, the Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons licenses were marked as "Approved for Free Cultural Works". Following in June 2009, Wikipedia 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 simply 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 r ...

(which was made compatible). An improved license compatibility with the greater free content ecosystem was given as reason for the license change. In October 2014, the Open Knowledge Foundation's

Open Definition The Open Definition is a document published by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) (previously Open Knowledge International) to define openness in relation to data and content. It specifies what licences for such material may and may not stipula ...

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 and Free Software Definition). A distinct difference is the focus given to the public domain 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 research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

") and the readability (" open formats"). The same three creative commons licenses are recommended for open content ( CC BY, CC BY-SA, and CC0) as additionally three for open data 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 (ODbL).

"Free cultural works" approved licenses

* Against DRM * BSD-like non-copyleft licenses * CERN Open Hardware License * CC0 * Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) * Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) *

Design Science License Design Science License (DSL) is a copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' re ...

Free Art License The Free Art License (FAL), (french: Licence Art Libre (LAL)) is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works. History The license was written in July 2000 with contributions from the mailing ...

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 make ...

(without invariant sections)licenses
on freedomdefined.org * GNU General Public License * MirOS Licence * MIT License *

Open Publication License The Open Publication License (OPL) was published by the Open Content Project in 1999 as a public copyright license for documents. It superseded the Open Content License, which was published by the Open Content Project in 1998. Starting around 2 ...

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 * WikiEducator is an international online community project for the collaborative development of learning materials, which educators are free to reuse, adapt and share without restriction. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 and is supported by the ...

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