Luckily, one of the most popular open license sets, Creative Commons, has a very good explanation of their licenses. One of the reasons for their popularity is the simplicity and straight forward nature of their licenses, and their focus on content, not software. If you are looking for an open source license for your content, this is a great place to start. GitHub, a large open source repository, also provides a guide for choosing an open license, this one targeted more to the software development community.
An interesting side effect of attaching a permissive license to your work is that you are immediately conscious of the need to design the project for uses and interests beyond your own. It's still early and we have already touched on constructionism.