Invention, intellectual property, and income

Creative commons

Creative Commons is commonly used for design projects. Different types of CC licenses are available, each granting certain rights. A CC license has four basic parts, which can be used individually or in combination. The parts are:

• Attribution: The author must be attributed as the creator of the work. Beyond that, the work can be modified, distributed, copied and otherwise used.
• Share Alike: The work can be modified, distributed and so forth, but only under the same CC license.
• Non-Commercial: The work can be modified, distributed and so on, but not for commercial purposes. The language about what constitutes "commercial" is a bit vague (no express definition is provided), so you may want to clarify this in your own projects. For example, some might interpret "non-commercial" as simply meaning that you can't sell the work. Others might take it to mean that you can't even put the work on a website that has advertising. Still others might consider something is "commercial" only if it makes a profit.
• No Derivative Works: This means you can copy and distribute the licensed work, but you can't modify it in any way or create work based on the original.

MIT

• It's one of the shortest and most liberal. Its terms are very loose and more permissive than most other licenses.
• It essentially says that anyone can use and modify the software however they like, as long as they put my name somewhere, and as long as they understand I make no promises regarding the software's quality.
  • You can use, copy and modify the software however you want. No one can prevent you from using it on any project, from copying it however many times you want and in whatever format you like, or from changing it however you want.
  • You can give the software away for free or sell it. You have no restrictions on how to distribute it.
  • The only restriction is that it be accompanied by the license agreement.

MIT License is declared as below,

The MIT License

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and
associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit personsf to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or
substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT
NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

GPL

General Public License was First written by Richard Stallman in 1989. As of 2007 GPL is in version 3. GPL is based on the principle that we should be free to use, change, share and share changes to free software. Unlike the MIT, BSD and Apache licenses, work under GPL must remain under this license. GPL code can be sold, but no proprietary software can be derived from it. Once a work is released under the GPL, it remains GPL and no further restrictions can be applied.