Which Creative Commons licence should I use?

The six Creative Commons licences provide a range of options for creators who want to share their work with the public while still retaining copyright. The best way to decide which licence is appropriate for you is to think about why you want to share and how you hope others will use your work.

For example, here are a few questions to consider:

• Do you think people might make interesting new works out of your creation? Do you want to give people the ability to translate your writing into different languages, or otherwise customise it for their own needs? If so, you should choose a licence that allows your work to be adapted.
• Is it important to you that your images can be added to Wikipedia? If so, you should choose CC BY, BY-SA or CC0, because Wikipedia does not allow images licensed under any of the NonCommercial or NoDerivatives licences except in limited circumstances.
• Do you want to give away all your rights in your work so that it can be used by anyone in the world for any purpose? If so, you might want to think about using the public domain dedication tool, CC0.

If you need some help deciding which licence might be best for you, this adapted flowchart from CC Australia might be useful – but please note that the information it contains is not legal advice. Starting at the top of the chart, the chart asks a series of questions to help you determine which CC licence would work best for your needs.

This is an adapted version of the flowchart featured on Which Creative Commons licence is right for me [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] by CC Australia. CC BY 3.0