Microsoft Office to get Creative Commons license support

Microsoft Office to get Creative Commons license support

Microsoft and the Creative Commons are collaborating together to release a free tool which would enable the user of MS Office suite to attach a Creative Commons copyright license to documents and other files.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization, which provides licenses allowing publishers to share information while retaining some rights. It is frequently used by Bloggers and image hosting websites like Flickr.

Microsoft as a result would become the first vendor to embed a license-selection option inside its applications. Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Creative Commons said in a statement on this new development: “This is important to us because a huge amount of creative work is created inside the Office platform. Having a simple way to add Creative Commons licenses obviously helps us spread those licenses much more broadly.”

This is great news for people who develop content using MS Office applications. The tool once installed would appear as a new option in the Microsoft Office applications. Using this tool would generate a Creative Commons logo, a short summary of the license chosen, and a hyperlink to the Creative Commons Web site.

This tool would be available as a free download on both Creative Commons Web site and Microsoft Office Online.