Types of licenses
There are a few different types of free licenses you can use on Wikipedia.
- CC BY-SA: This means it's an "Attribution-ShareAlike" license.
- CC BY: This means you want to get credit for work, including remixes and modifications, but you don't care if the new work is shared under the same license.
- CC0: This means you release your work with no restrictions whatsoever. They can modify, reuse, and sell the work without giving you credit or following a similar license.
When you’re looking for images online, you may also see that people have created a “No commercial use” license: CC BY-NC-SA. This license means the creator has forbidden that work from being sold. That kind of license is NOT allowed for images on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a website that anyone can use for any reason. People might use copies of articles to include in textbooks, or as examples in a book about their topic. A Non-Commercial license means that people can’t use the image in anything that could be theoretically sold. That’s why these licenses can’t be used on Wikipedia.
Another license to avoid are Non-Derivative licenses, or ND. This restriction says that people can't make something new out of the image, under any circumstance. That's not something we can promise on Wikipedia, so this type of restriction isn't allowed.