Full attribution license
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The Full Attribution License is a copyright-based license created by Steven Carroll, a developer who wrote the license to allow third parties to use material in exchange for a link to the author's website. It was released on January 5, 2008.
Many of the previous licenses, notably all the "give it away free" licences, grant certain baseline rights, such as the right to distribute the copyrighted work without changes, at no charge. Others, such as the GNU Free Documentation License restrict the changes that a distributor can make. But none thus far demanded payment for using the material in the form of web-links.
The Full attribution license was based on the text of the MIT License. The additional linking requirement represents a dramatic change from the laissez-faire MIT license.
Link building has become a traded currency on the Internet as companies and individuals have been widely trading links in exchange for cash and other benefits. These linkers believe that they will improve their ranking in search engines such as Google. Thus a currency has been created by linking, which has a value that can be traded with others or used for commercial benefits.
