Non-commercial use means that users may not sell, profit from, or commercialize OpenCourseWare materials or works derived from them. That said, we have found that there are certain "gray areas" in interpreting the non-commercial provision of OCW's Creative Commons license.
The guidelines below are intended to help users determine whether or not their use of OCW materials would be permitted under the "non-commercial" restriction. (Note that there are additional requirements (attribution and share alike) spelled out in our license - see Reusing MIT OpenCourseWare Content for an explanation of terms.)
Commercialization is prohibited
Users may not directly sell or profit from OCW materials or from works derived from OCW materials.
Example: A commercial education or training business may not offer courses based on OCW materials if students pay a fee for those courses and the business intends to profit as a result.
Determination of commercial vs. non-commercial purpose is based on the use, not the user
Materials may be used by individuals, institutions, governments, corporations, or other businesses whether for-profit or non-profit so long as the use itself is not a commercialization of the materials or a use that is directly intended to generate sales or profit.
Example: A corporation may use MIT OpenCourseWare materials for internal professional development and training purposes.
Incidental charges to recover reasonable reproduction costs may be permitted
Recovery of nominal actual costs for copying small amounts (under 1000 copies) of MIT OpenCourseWare content on paper or CDs is allowed for educational purposes so long as there is no profit motive and so long as the intended use of the copies is in compliance with all license terms. Students must be informed that the materials are freely available on the MIT OpenCourseWare site and that their purchase of copied materials is optional. Example: An institution in a remote area has limited Internet access and limited network infrastructure on campus and a professor offers to create CDs of MIT OpenCourseWare materials relevant to her course. The professor may recover the costs of creating the CDs.
If you are unsure whether your intended use qualifies as non-commercial use, please contact MIT OpenCourseWare.