CC BY 4.0 is Creative Commons’ most permissive licence that still requires attribution. Anyone may share, remix, adapt, and build on the material for any purpose, including commercial, provided they give appropriate credit, link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.
It is a good default for text, images, video, and datasets when you want the widest possible reuse but still want recognition. For pure databases in the EU, ODbL-1.0 addresses sui generis rights CC BY does not fully cover.
How to apply
Attach the licence to the work and include a visible attribution line such as:
"Work title" by Author is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Full license text
Attribution 4.0 International
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Creative Commons Corporation ("Creative Commons") is not a law firm and
does not provide legal services or legal advice. Distribution of
Creative Commons public licenses does not create a lawyer-client or
other relationship.
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
By exercising the Licensed Rights (defined below), You accept and agree
to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International Public License ("Public License"). To the
extent this Public License may be interpreted as a contract, You are
granted the Licensed Rights in consideration of Your acceptance of
these terms and conditions, and the Licensor grants You such rights in
consideration of benefits the Licensor receives from making the
Licensed Material available under these terms and conditions.
Section 1 -- Definitions.
Section 2 -- Scope.
Section 3 -- License Conditions.
a. Attribution.
1. If You Share the Licensed Material (including in modified
form), You must:
a. retain the following if it is supplied by the Licensor with
the Licensed Material:
i. identification of the creator(s);
ii. a copyright notice;
iii. a notice that refers to this Public License;
iv. a notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties;
v. a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material;
b. indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and retain
an indication of any previous modifications; and
c. indicate the Licensed Material is licensed under this
Public License, and include the text of, or the URI or
hyperlink to, this Public License.
Section 4 -- Sui Generis Database Rights.
Section 5 -- Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability.
Section 6 -- Term and Termination.
Section 7 -- Other Terms and Conditions.
Section 8 -- Interpretation.
… this text is abbreviated.
For the complete license text, see
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
Raw text also available at /license-texts/CC-BY-4.0.txt — handy for curl.