Copyright and Licensing

Documents created through the project and issues module of this site, including the content of the OSDDP Guide, are © copyright 2004 by the authors and can be used in accordance with the Creative Commons License, Attribution-ShareAlike2.0. All comments and other postings are © 2004 by the individual authors, All Rights Reserved.

By registering for this site, you also agree that any content posted to the projects and issues module will be made available under the Creative Commons License, Attribution-ShareAlike2.0. These conditions can be waived only if permission is obtained from the copyright holder(s). If you build on the work, you may only distribute the resulting content under this license.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is an organization made up of lawyers, activists, and information technology specialists which creates licenses to allow authors to share their works and is inspired by the GUN General Public License (GPL). Creative Commons licensing gives authors the opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other without completely giving up all rights of ownership. They can share their creations, maintaining the right to decide to what extent they would like their works opened to the public. This is made possible by the variety of licenses provided to authors from Creative Commons. These licenses provide a balance between restriction of use and enabling others to use material for further creative development.

Every work is given a copyright immediately after creation, giving the author “all rights reserved” under law. This means that in order to distribute, use, or build on a creation one must obtain permission from the original author. Rather then competing with copyright, Creative Commons is simply working with the copyright law in order to give access to all types of works including scholarship, music, film, literature and photography.

If you would like to learn more, visit Creative Commons and see the Creative Commons Get Creative flash movie.

Explanation of OSDDP's Creative Commons Licensing Agreement

The Creative Commons license used by OSDDP allows anyone to read, alter, and distribute the licensed text as long as they agree to the terms on the Creative Commons website. The following is a more detailed description of the Attribution-ShareAlike2.0 license used by OSDDP:

You may copy, distribute, display, and perform works, as well as make derivative works, and use the work commercially. You may only do this if you abide by the following conditions:

• Attribution: You must give the original author credit.
• Share Alike: If you redistribute this work, you must do so under the Attribution-ShareAlike2.0 license.

The following scenarios will show what is allowed through the Creative Commons agreement.

Scenario 1: Another Creative Commons user wants to change an author’s original work so he/she can use it as their own. This may be done, as long as credit is given to the original author and the new text includes the Attribution-ShareAlike2.0 license.

Scenario 2: An author creates an original work, of which she/he has attached an Attribution-ShareAlike2.0 license. Under the license, the author still has the authority to edit, update, and/or build upon his original work. However, under the Creative Commons license, the original author has also given some rights for their original work to other people. This may only take place, if the author/artists wanting to make changes has agreed to the same Creative Commons license as the original author.

Scenario 3: An author wishes to use another author’s original work, without having to attach a Creative Commons license to his own piece. The author wanting to make changes may do this by obtaining explicit permission from the original author/copyright owner.

How to apply a Creative Commons license to a text

OSDDP members submitting documents for inclusion in the OSDDP Guide must include a notice for the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License at the bottom of their document.

For HTML documents, include the following HTML code:

<!-- Creative Commons License -->

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" border="0" src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif" /></a><br />

This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License</a>.

<!-- /Creative Commons License -->

This will produce the following in your HTML document when viewed in a browser:



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


In non HTML-formatted documents, use the following text:

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.