Digital Learning Resource

Useful Information about Open Software

What is Copyright?

Before you can legally reuse learning resources from the internet (or any other source) it is important to know about copyright. Every published work is protected whether it has the © or not. This means it may not be copied or changed without the owner’s permission.

Open Software
In recent years sites on the internet have provided a place where owners can publish their work and allow people to use it under terms they set.
Useful sites are:-
http://creativecommons.org/
Australian Flexible Learning Framework Community
http://del.icio.us/leighblackall/OpenCourseWare
http://sourceforge.net/
http://opencontent.org/ocwfinder/

You can use the above sites or search for using a search engine of your choice & fill in the topic you require0 + open software (eg. Accounting + open software).
These are excellent sites for finding resources to use in Flexible Learning but it is important to know the terms of the license if you are going to use a certain resource, as licenses vary. If you are not aware of what the license symbols mean then you may inadvertently use the resource illegally. We will look at Creative Commons Licenses.

There are 6 different licenses in CreativeCommons which allow the world to copy, distribute and sometimes change the original work under the owner’s conditions. Symbols are used for each type of license & these are inserted by the name of all works available from CreativeCommons (see chart below).If permission is obtained from the owner of the license the conditions are over-ruled.
Other sites do not use symbols so it is very important to read the License agreement before clicking “I Agree” because if a person does not know the content of the license agreement they could us the software illegally.