The rights to any creative work reside with the author of the work upon its creation, unless the author expressly distributes those rights to others. For example, a work-for-hire contract consigns the author's rights to the commissioner of the work. Authors can also donate their work to the public domain, where it can be used by anyone for any purpose.
Open licensing is a middle path, where authors allow free access to their work, but retain some control over how the work is used by others, such as whether the work can be changed or used for commercial purposes. The most common method of open licensing is to select and apply one of the Creative Commons licenses.