Blog archives

Q: Do modifications and adaptations need to be indicated?

Answer: In the 4.0 license suite, licensees are required to indicate if they made modifications to the licensed material. This obligation applies whether or not the modifications produced adapted material. As with all other attribution and marking requirements, this may be done in a manner reasonable to the means, medium, and context. For example, “This section is an excerpt of the original.” For trivial modifications, such as correcting spelling errors, it may be reasonable to omit the notice.

Q: If I remix something that carries a Share-Alike license, then is it implied what I make from it carries that license?

Answer: All of the CC 4.0 licenses (not just SA) require you say what you modified in the attribution statement: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#how-do-i-properly-attribute-material-offered-under-a-creative-commons-license You must also indicate if you have modified the work—for example, if you have taken an excerpt, or cropped a photo. (For versions prior to 4.0, this is only required if you have created an adaptation by contributing your own creative material, but it is recommended even when not required.) It is not necessary to note trivial alterations, such as correcting a typo or changing a font size. Finally, you must retain an indication of previous modifications to the work.

• License Versions – Creative Commons

Q: Do we need to include the Disclaimer of the U.S. Department of Labor as the Funder of the Project on the materials we are uploading to SkillsCommons?

Answer: If applicable, the following needs to be on all products developed in whole or in part with grant funds, “This workforce product was funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The product was created by the grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. The U.S. Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any information on linked sites and including, but not limited to, accuracy of the information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued availability, or ownership.”

Retrieved 12/5/2014 from: http://doleta.gov/grants/pdf/SGA-DFA-PY-10-03.pdf pg. 15.

Q: What material is required to be uploaded to SkillsCommons?

Answer: According to the SGA, the Department considers curricula, course materials, teacher guides, and other products developed with grant funds to be considered grant deliverables.  Many of these items were identified in each grantee’s statement of work as deliverables and to be submitted to the Department according to the workplan or prior to the end of the period of performance. Additional materials not identified in the original statement of work but produced with grant funding should also be uploaded to SkillsCommons. For example, if recruitment and outreach materials, student support materials, supplemental instructional materials, etc. was produced with grant funding, you should upload these materials as well.

Retrieved 6/10/2016 from: http://www.doleta.gov/grants/pdf/SGA-DFA-PY-13-10.pdf pgs. 54 (.iii) & 75 (4).

Q: Can purchased or royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, music, and videos be uploaded to SkillsCommons?

Answer: Unless a grantee receives permission from the licensee to upload the purchased content to SkillsCommons, all proprietary material must be removed before uploading it to SkillsCommons. A grantee may put a statement that says what the proprietary material is and ideally a link to where others can find it from the publisher and arrange for their own rights to use.

Q: If proprietary licensed material is being mixed with new OER materials, what license(s) should be used?

Answer: Grantees cannot put a CC BY license on works that are purchased from iStock or other sources, as they are not the creator or rights holder. So, if grantees are mixing these works with new content that are being authored then a statement needs to be included that states: “Except where otherwise noted these materials are licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY).”Then, wherever the proprietary, purchased material is used it must be stated that there is a copyright for example, “Photo title x © iStock used with permission.” A grantee can indicate how others can also find and purchase the rights to use it if they want.

Q: How do I add the Creative Commons license to software code that we have developed?

Answer: Creative Commons licenses are designed for content and not software code so you won’t add the Creative Commons license to the software code.  All software code should have documentation to describe the software code structure and strategy.

Creative Commons has recommendations on their FAQ page about open licensing of software code that we recommend as well. Please see: Can I Apply a Creative Commons License to Software?

“We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative.

Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses.

Version 4.0 of CC’s Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license is one-way compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3). This compatibility mechanism is designed for situations in which content is integrated into software code in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish the two. There are special considerations required before using this compatibility mechanism. Read more about it here.

Also, the CC0 Public Domain Dedication is GPL-compatible and acceptable for software. For details, see the relevant CC0 FAQ entry.

While we recommend against using a CC license on software itself, CC licenses may be used for software documentation, as well as for separate artistic elements such as game art or music.”

Q: Is there information on CC BY licensing and commercial vs. non-commercial use?

Answer: A full description of all Creative Commons licenses can be found here: About The CC Licenses. As you will see there are other Creative Commons licenses that don’t allow others to make commercial use of works.

Q: If a school (or consortia) develops an item using grant funds with a CC BY license, will the school (or consortia) be required to allow that the item be used for future commercial use?

Answer: Yes. The CC BY license allows commercial use. So for example businesses you’ve partnered with can also potentially use the course materials for staff or customer training.