Sharing Creative Works-part 4

All Creative Commons licenses require attribution. This means that others may share your work so long as they credit you. There are some other things to consider when you choose to share your work with the world.

Do you want to allow other people to sell or make money off of your creation without having to ask? Prohibiting people from using your work commercially may limit how widely it is spread.

This also means that no one can make any money from your work without your permission. You can work out individual arrangements for commercial use so that can get paid when others profit from your creation.

Do you want to allow others to make changes (derivatives) to your work without having to ask? Prohibiting derivatives might prevent others from making something really cool out of your original.

But, this also means they may not use your work in a way you disagree with.

If you allow others to make changes to your work, you also need to think about whether or not you will require them to use the same license as you ("Share Alike"). A ShareAlike license ensures that the terms you chose for your original creation are preserved, but also may limit how much the derivative work can be shared (and in turn, how likely it is for someone to use your original work in a derivative)

On the other hand, Share-Alike ensures that your work is always used under the terms you want, even after many generations of copies and derivatives.

It's up to you to chose what you will create, and how you will share it with the world!

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