On 12 and 13 November 2025, the KlimaOER team from all locations, meteorologists interested in OER and the OER community met for a licensing workshop at the meteorological institute of the University of Hamburg, the Geomatikum. Part of our project is to provide workshops and guidelines for other OER producers – the licensing workshop was the third in our series, following our last workshop in March on open source tools. Of course, the workshops are open to anyone interested and free of charge.
Akio and Kay prepared inputs, presentations and discussions for this – and took away our fears of the very intimidating topic of OER-compatible licensing.
After a brief general introduction, lawyer Jens Brelle from Multimediakontor Hamburg gave us some input on copyright and licences. One thing that stuck with all of us was that when reworking OER, licensing may be stricter, but it must not be relaxed. We also learned about the difference between quality standards in academic work and the legal basis. Both are very helpful for our work in creating our best practice example.
Kay and Akio then introduced us to different types of licences. They managed to give us an overview of the seemingly confusing jumble of letters that make up Creative Commons licences. Creative Commons is an organisation that standardises non-profit licensing. But what we have now discovered is that only three of the possible licences are actually OER-compatible – they result from the 5 freedoms of the OER strategy (store, use, process, mix, distribute). You can find out more about this in our licensing guide, which will be published in a few weeks.
To round off the day, digest the wealth of information, network and recharge our batteries for the next day, this first workshop day ended with a delicious meal in a pizzeria.
Day two began with an introduction to the HOOU platform, where we will publish our best practice example. The focus was on questions such as: How does the platform deal with learning materials that it hosts that are not licensed in accordance with OER? The quick answer: It is always best to look for alternatives when it comes to images, etc.
Henry Steinau then introduced us to the OER verification tool from iRights.Lab. Using a manual and a guide, OERs are checked in detail for their OER suitability and the results are communicated to the creators using a detailed feedback form. Is this also applicable to our project?
This question was addressed in the last part of our workshop. After a trip to the roof of the 85-metre-high Geomatikum building and a short imaginary city tour above the rooftops of Hamburg led by Akio, we turned our attention to how we could apply what we had learned over the two days to KlimaOER. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of licences and the need for consistency in this area – a direct application of what we had learned. We found that the confusion surrounding licences had cleared up somewhat for us, but at the same time we noticed how many details needed to be taken into account. We therefore considered the workshop a complete success.
For a summary of the workshop content, please take a look at our guide to licensing, which will be published in german soon. It is intended to help you apply licensing guidelines to your own OERs.
