Free intellectual property
From Halbeeg, the open encyclopedia · Af-Soomaali
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Free intellectual property (also called "open") is intellectual property or creative work released under legal conditions that allow anyone to use, copy, distribute, modify, and share modified versions. The term "free" here refers to freedom of use, not merely to the availability of something at no cost.
Such material is based on copyright law. The creator uses those rights to issue a license (ijāza) granting broad permission, whereas otherwise all rights would be restricted. Free intellectual property is therefore a legal choice by the rightsholder, not the absence of legal protection.
Common conditions
Most accepted definitions emphasize four types of freedom: use for any purpose, study and sharing of the work, distribution of copies, and distribution of improved versions. To enable this, the license typically requires access to the original form of the work—for example, the source code of software or the editable file of an image.
Permitted conditions
Free licenses generally still impose two conditions: attribution to the creator, and share-alike, which requires that works derived from it be released under the same license. Conditions prohibiting commercial use or modification—such as some Creative Commons licenses—are typically not counted as free under strict definitions.
Examples and uses
Large projects based on free intellectual property include Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, image and music libraries with open licenses, and open educational resources (OER). Free and open-source software represents a related and legally structured field, though it is generally defined separately.