Overview

At Saylor Academy, we strive to include third-party learning materials that qualify as open content — that is, resources that users may retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute (the “5R activities“). These resources are available under a number of different licenses (see below).

Some of our learning resources, while free to link to and use on the Web, are not “open content”. In our courses, we attribute each learning resource to its author/owner, either on the resource itself, alongside our link to the resource, or on each course’s Terms of Use page. While we do our utmost to ensure that we have correctly attributed and described the licensing of the content we use, those seeking to reuse third-party (i.e. not created or owned by Saylor Academy) materials should verify their rights to do so.

Saylor Academy Original Content

Except where otherwise noted, our course outlines, syllabi, framing notes, and other original content attributed to Saylor Academy are available under a Creative Commons Attribution license (see our site footer).

One explicit exception is final exam content: the questions and answers that comprise our exam “banks” and/or an individual exam attempt are not licensed for reuse and must not be copied, adapted, posted or distributed without permission (students may keep a copy of their exam for personal, offline use as provided on the review page for each exam attempt).

Creative Commons License Suite

Creative Commons licenses (www.creativecommons.org) facilitate sharing of content by allowing copyright holders to specify what users may and may not do with it. Six basic licenses are offered:

  • BY (Attribution) – This work can be distributed, remixed, tweaked, and built upon (even for commercial purposes) as long as proper attribution is given to the original creator.
  • BY-SA (Attribution–ShareAlike) – This material can be remixed, tweaked, and built upon (even for commercial purposes) as long as proper attribution is given to the original creator and new material is licensed under the same terms.
  • BY-NC (Attribution–NonCommercial) – This material can be remixed, tweaked, and built upon as long as new works are non-commercial and the proper attribution is given to the original creator. New material does not have to be licensed under the same terms.
  • BY-ND (Attribution–NoDerivs) – This material can be redistributed both commercially and non-commercially as long as it remains unchanged and in whole with credit to the creator.
  • BY-NC-SA (Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike) – This material can be remixed, tweaked, and built upon as long as proper attribution is given to the original creator and the new material is non-commercial and licensed under identical terms.
  • BY-NC-ND (Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs) – This material can be downloaded and shared as long as proper attribution is given to the creator. This material cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.

Providing proper attribution – Both Creative Commons and Open Washington maintain tools to help you easily attribute Creative Commons materials:

GNU License Suite

GNU is an organization sponsored by the Free Software Academy; GNU has produced a number of licenses relating to software. Some of our materials make use of the following:

  • GPLGNU’s General Public License is used for many software packages, as well as other items. Under this license, materials can be copied and distributed verbatim, but cannot be changed in any way.
  • GFDL – The GNU Free Documentation License is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other documents. Under this license, materials can be copied and redistributed with or without modifications, either commercially or non-commercially.

Design Science License (DSL)

The Design Science License is a form of copyleft intended for use on source data to grant permission to distribute, publish or otherwise present verbatim copies of the entire work, in any medium, provided that full copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty, where applicable, is conspicuously published on all copies, and a copy of the license is distributed along with the work. The DSL license was written by Michael Stutz.

Academic Permission

These are materials that can only be reproduced or distributed for academic or teaching purposes. The licensors often intend audience and distribution to be limited to a classroom or a private website.

Non-Commercial Permission

These are materials that can only be reproduced or distributed for non-commercial purposes, as specified by the copyright holder.

Standard Permission

These are materials that Saylor Academy has received permission to host. However, please note that these materials are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced or distributed in any capacity without explicit permission from the copyright holder.