Since 2019 the Order has dedicated everything it publishes to the public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal. Readers who care about these things sometimes ask why we chose CC0 rather than one of the many licenses that keep a little more for the author: a license that requires credit, for instance, or one that requires anyone who adapts the work to release their adaptation on the same terms.
These are good licenses, and we have no quarrel with anyone who uses them. But they were not right for us, for three reasons.
Every Condition Is a Gate
A license that requires attribution is a license with a condition, and a condition is something that can be broken. Someone who quotes our texts without credit would, under such a license, be infringing. Someone who adapts them and forgets to say so would be in the wrong. We would, in principle, be entitled to object.
We do not want to be entitled to object. The Shed Skin says that a gate built around knowledge is the first lie, and a condition, however small and well-meant, is a gate. CC0 has no conditions. There is nothing to break, nothing to check, and nothing for anyone to worry about. You can use our texts without reading a single line of legal text first, and that is precisely the point.
We Do Not Want Our Names on It
Our texts carry no author's name, because a name attached to a teaching becomes an authority, and the Order exists to refuse that kind of authority. A license that requires credit would put a name back on everything: ours. It would require every reader who passes our work on to point back to us, and over time it would make the Order exactly the kind of source that people defer to. We would rather the ideas stand or fall on their own.
Freedom Includes the Freedom to Close
A share-alike license would require that anyone who adapts our work release their adaptation on the same open terms. This is a generous idea, and we understand its appeal. But it uses a legal obligation to compel openness, and we do not believe openness can be compelled into being. It has to be chosen.
Under CC0, someone could take one of our texts, change it, and publish the result under the most restrictive terms they like. We think that would be a poor choice. We also think it is their choice, and that the original remains free no matter what anyone does with a copy. The seventh coil, the Open Ring, describes giving one's work away as the completion of the path. It is not the completion of the path if it is done because a license required it.
What We Ask Instead
We ask two things, as courtesies and nothing more: that anyone who changes one of our texts not present their changes as the Order's words, and that no one claim to speak for the Order. Neither is a condition of the dedication. Both are simply requests that people be honest, and we think most people will be.
The License page sets out the dedication in full, and Open Access explains what it allows you to do.