Licensing

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This page covers licensing and copyright issues as they pertain to the One Laptop Per Child project.

Overview

For a quick introduction to open licensing, watch Creative Commons' short "Get Creative" movie. In a nutshell, when you create something (anything - a piece of software, music, a book, a picture, and more) you own the copyright to your creation. Copyrights "protect" your work by legally ensuring that other people can't use, copy, modify, or redistribute it without your permission. However, sometimes you make something you want to share with other people, and you want to tell them it's okay to copy, remix, share - and most importantly, improve what you've made without having to ask you for permission every single time.

You can do this by releasing your work into the public domain or under an open license that explains to other people what they can and can't do with your work (entirely up to you - for instance, you might allow people to distribute your work, but only for non-commercial purposes, and only if they give you credit). You can license your work by referencing or including a short licensing statement from within the work itself; it usually takes only a minute or two, and there are instructions on how to do this later in this page.

OLPC is a strong advocate for and practitioner of open licensing, as the project is designed around the idea of the free sharing of knowledge. Our goal is to empower children to share and build on what they learn in every way imaginable. There should be no barriers to children who wish to recreate and build on the materials, software, and tools they are given; everyone should be free to use, redistribute, and produce modified version of and works derived from these things. For more on OLPC's specific views on this, see the OLPC on open source software and OLPC on free knowledge sections.

Why bother?

Licensing is a complex topic, and many people don't bother to take a few minutes to learn about it, thinking that they can always re-release their creations under an open license later on. This is usually true, but the longer a copyrighted work is out there, the more successful it becomes, and the more people contribute to it, the more difficult it gets to release it under an open license since you have to have permission of all copyright holders to relicense any work. For example, it took the Mozilla project several years, and huge amounts of work, to get permission to relicense their code base from all of the authors. In some other examples, entire software libraries had to be duplicated because they happened to use binary commercial plugins.

Requiring copyright assignment so that you have control can also become a nightmare: it reduces the number of possible contributors significantly, as many people have employers who won't allow copyright assignment or make it very difficult, and it reduces the number of people with standing in court in case the copyright is violated. Some projects, notably the GNU project for some software, require copyright assignment for all contributions. Sometimes this can be the right strategy if the software might be free software is also available under commercial licenses for proprietary use. There are quite a few examples of this as a business model for the funding of free software development (e.g. BerkeleyDB of Sleepycat Software, now part of Oracle).

Releasing your projects under an open license from the start, and being public and clear about the terms under which you're releasing it, makes your creations free to share, now and in the future, with the absolute minimum amount of effort and fuss. So what? Well...

  • Would you like to reach and help more people? Open-licensing puts your creations within the reach of people who might not otherwise be able to afford licensing fees. This is especially important to education; teachers and students need to be able to find and use tools and information without having to worry about copyright issues.
  • Would you like your creation (and your name) to be used and known by more people? Making something free to share makes it much more likely that it (and your reputation, if you require attribution) will be shared. Also, if you allow people to make derivative works from your creation, the "children" of something you made could spread even further.
  • Would you like more people to help you work on your creation? Open licensing makes it easier for newcomers to jump in and contribute.

Quickstart: Licensing your material

  1. Get permission from all copyright holders (in almost all cases, this is the list of all creators/contributors prior to a work's open-licensing) to relicense the work. If you are the sole creator(s) of a work that doesn't include any other copyrighted content and haven't assigned the copyright of your work to anyone else, you're good to go.
  2. Choose a license. Read the overview of licenses section below for a brief overview of your options. For code, we recommend the GPL for end-user applications and the LGPL or MIT licenses for libraries. For all other content, we recommend releasing your work into the public domain via CC-PD or using the CC-BY license.
  3. Apply your license. Follow the how-to link under the license you picked; the links for our recommended licenses are given below.
    • GPL and LGPL - for releasing your code via the GNU General Public License or the Lesser General Public License. The GPL is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. The GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program-- to make sure it remains free software for all its users. In contrast, the LGPL allows proprietary/commercial use of your software as well.
    • MIT - To license your software under the MIT license, include the license text specified in the link, or a reference to it, in your source files.
    • CC-PD - for releasing your content via the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration. This releases your copyright and lets your work be freely used, changed, and shared by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
    • CC-BY - for releasing your content via the Creative Commons Attribution license. This license lets others use, change, and share your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you with original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered in terms of what others can do with your work.
  4. That's it! A few notes:
    • OLPC will generally only host notes with one of the five recommended licenses above.
    • You will be attributed as the creator or publisher of these works wherever they are used. Moral rights guarantee this in many parts of the world; a CC Attribution license adds an extra emphasis on doing so. If you would like to be attributed in a particular way - with connection to a logo, originating website, or source repository, please include those materials and links xalong with the work. Please also include information about any authors and organizations who have been involved with the creation of a work who should receive similar recognition.

Quickstart: Asking others to license their material

Overview of licenses

Public Domain (Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication [CC-PD]

Once placed in the public domain, your work may be freely used, changed, and shared by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived. Peter St-Andre has an excellent essay, "Who's Afraid of the Public Domain?" that outlines the reasons to release your work into the public domain.

One way to release your work into the public domain is to visit the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication Form, which will guide you through the process of placing your work under the Creative Commons "Public Domain Dedication." The form will ask you for your email, name, and title of work, and send you a confirmation email to verify your contact information. Then, it will autogenerate the license text for you along with instructions for how to include it in your work.

Creative Commons Attribution license [CC-BY]

This license lets others use, change, and share your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you with original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered in terms of what others can do with your work.

Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license [CC-BY-SA]

This license lets others use, change, and share your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you with original creation and license new creations under identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

Creative Commons Non-commercial license [CC-NC]

This license lets others use, change, and share your work non-commercially, and although their new works must acknowledge you, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

GNU Free Documentation License [GFDL]

Similar to the GPL (see above), the GNU Free Documentation License is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or non-commercially.

GNU General Public License [GPL]

Abridged from the GNU website:

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. The GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program-- to make sure it remains free software for all its users.

The CC-GNU GPL adds the Creative Commons' metadata and Commons Deed to the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License.

GNU Lesser General Public License [LGPL]

Using the ordinary GPL for your software makes it available only for free programs; using the LGPL makes it available for use in proprietary programs as well. Read Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library for an in-depth comparison between the GPL and the LGPL.

The CC-GNU LGPL adds the Creative Commons' metadata and Commons Deed to the Free Software Foundation's GNU Lesser General Public License.

MIT License

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