Creative Commons launched a new project to help entrepreneurs, organizations, and governments use Creative Commons licenses and still generate income.
The Creative Commons Open Business Models Initiative aims to show how Creative Commons licenses can be used to create financially sustainable organizations. Funded by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation, it was developed in response to a question frequently asked of the Creative Commons team: “How do I earn a living, pay the bills, and keep the lights on if I openly license my work and give it away for free?”
Paul Stacey, the organization’s Associate Director of Global Learning, explains the project’s goal:
“We aim to help businesses see how to use and contribute to the commons in a way that aligns with the norms and values of the commons, while at the same time operating as a business. We want to show what sustainability models look like. We’re planning to generate designs for how to move from closed to open. We want to provide models for businesses whose aim is to provide products and services that have both economic and social value. We aim to make visible how open business models work and provide tools and strategies for designing and developing your own.”
CreativeCommon is looking for people to help them with the Service Design, here is how:
- Design, develop, and iterate a set of interactive Creative Commons open business model tools that anyone can use to design an open business model.
- Use these open business model tools yourself to generate your own open business model(s).
- Share the results of your participation including the open business models you generate.
- Provide feedback and recommendations for improving the Creative Commons open business model tools and process.
- Partner directly with Creative Commons on developing an open business model for your specific initiative.
- Participate in a Creative Commons workshop on generating open business models.
- Contribute to a Creative Commons open business models report.
via Creative Commons Launches Open Business Models Initiative – Shareable.
There is a simple thing that Creative Commons needs to do that it refuses to do for heavy communistic ideological reasons, and that is to make one of its “licenses” which of course have no legal standing a “license” that says simply “buy this work for cash”. A frank, honest admission that it’s okay to buy and sell on the Internet — Amazon and ebay, going past the communism of Tim Berners-Lee and other idealistic pioneers — are what made the Internet viable. If CC wants to be relevant, it has to discard its ideological blinkers and have a license that says essentially “pay me because I worked hard and I have a family to feed.” That stops pretending that if people give things away for free, they will indeed buy groceries. None of the silly anecdotal stories of ideologues like Doctorow making money by giving away books because people will hit their tip jars are rigorously tested, followed up, peer-reviewed. End the fiction, and if you must have these silly give-aways that actually don’t help creators, then add to them one that says frankly PAY ME. Because currently, not a single one of these licenses does that simply, normal, human thing — again, due to ideological constraints.
No, you are totally wrong and sadly very confused about the basic idea of Creative Commons and its licenses.. CC will never embrace such proprietary and commercial patent trolling businesses that you are talking about.
Any progress in this? Has someone actually adapted or committed to this Open Biz model (open technology or open government would be the most interesting)..?