Open Licenses

Definition

Open licenses are provided with open data and open software (e.g., analysis code) to define how others can (re)use the licensed material. In setting out the permissions and restrictions, open licenses often permit the unrestricted access, reuse and retribution of an author’s original work. Datasets are typically licensed under a type of open licence known as a Creative Commons license (e.g., MIT, Apache, and GPL). These can differ in relatively subtle ways with GPL licenses (and their variants) being Copyleft licenses that require that any derivative work is licensed under the same terms as the original.