The Ford Foundation has announced that it is adopting an open licensing policy for all grant-funded projects and research to promote greater transparency and accessibility of materials. Effective February 1, grantees and consultants will be required to make foundation-funded materials subject to a Creative Commons license allowing others, free of charge and without requesting permission, the ability to copy, redistribute, and adapt existing materials, provided they give appropriate credit to the original author.
The Ford Foundation has long supported transparency—including open licensing, which is an alternative to the traditional 'all rights reserved' copyright and encourages sharing intellectual property in a digital global commons. By moving to broadly disseminate a large amount of educational and research materials resulting from its funding, the foundation hopes to make its work and the work of its grantees more accessible and ultimately, increase its impact.
The Ford Foundation plans to use the most recent Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), the most open license offered by Creative Commons, a non-profit organization and Ford Foundation grantee dedicated to facilitating the sharing and use of materials through simple, standardized open licenses.
Beginning February 1, project grants from the foundation will include a requirement that the grantee widely disseminate all copyrightable products funded by the grant—including white papers, research reports, and websites—and license them under the CC BY 4.0 license. In certain situations, such as when the expected product contains sensitive or confidential material, the Creative Commons license will not be a requirement. Additionally, the change will apply to all materials not subject to third-party ownership on the Ford Foundation's website.
The Ford Foundation joins other organisations, including Open Society Foundations, the Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which use some form of Creative Commons license. Working together with these partners and others, the foundation is reaffirming its commitment to make the philanthropic sector a leader in information sharing and knowledge transfer.
