Plaintext
ii Made With Creative Commons
MADE
WITH
CREATIVE
COMMONS
PAUL STACEY AND SARAH HINCHLIFF PEARSON
Made With Creative Commons iii
Made With Creative Commons
by Paul Stacey & Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
© 2017, by Creative Commons.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA), version 4.0.
ISBN 978-87-998733-3-3
Cover and interior design by Klaus Nielsen, vinterstille.dk
Content editing by Grace Yaginuma
Illustrations by Bryan Mathers, bryanmathers.com
Downloadable e-book available at madewith.cc
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Ctrl+Alt+Delete Books
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2200 Copenhagen N
Denmark
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This book is published under a CC BY-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute,
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give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you
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Made With Creative Commons is published with the kind support of Creative Commons and
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iv Made With Creative Commons
“I don’t know a whole lot about non-
fiction journalism. . . The way that I
think about these things, and in terms
of what I can do is. . . essays like this are
occasions to watch somebody reason-
ably bright but also reasonably average
pay far closer attention and think at far
more length about all sorts of different
stuff than most of us have a chance to in
our daily lives.”
- DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Made With Creative Commons v
vi Made With Creative Commons
CONTENTS
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
PART 1: THE BIG PICTURE
1 The New World of Digital Commons by Paul Stacey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Commons, the Market, and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Four Aspects of a Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A Short History of the Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The Digital Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Birth of Creative Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Changing Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Benefits of the Digital Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Our Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 How to Be Made with Creative Commons by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Problem Zero: Getting Discovered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Making Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Making Human Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3 The Creative Commons Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
PART 2: THE CASE STUDIES
Arduino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Ártica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Blender Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Cards Against Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The Conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Cory Doctorow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Figshare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Figure.nz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Knowledge Unlatched . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Lumen Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Jonathan Mann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Made With Creative Commons vii
Noun Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Open Data Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Opendesk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
OpenStax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Amanda Palmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
PLOS (Public Library of Science) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Rijksmuseum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Shareable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Siyavula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
SparkFun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
TeachAIDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Tribe of Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Wikimedia Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
viii Made With Creative Commons
Made With Creative Commons ix
x Made With Creative Commons
FOREWORD
Three years ago, just after I was hired as CEO of in their case study: “We don’t make jokes and
Creative Commons, I met with Cory Doctorow games to make money—we make money so
in the hotel bar of Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. we can make more jokes and games.”
As one of CC’s most well-known proponents— Creative Commons’ focus is on building a
one who has also had a successful career as vibrant, usable commons, powered by collab-
a writer who shares his work using CC—I told oration and gratitude. Enabling communities
him I thought CC had a role in defining and ad- of collaboration is at the heart of our strategy.
vancing open business models. He kindly dis- With that in mind, Creative Commons began
agreed, and called the pursuit of viable busi- this book project. Led by Paul and Sarah, the
ness models through CC “a red herring.” project set out to define and advance the best
He was, in a way, completely correct—those open business models. Paul and Sarah were
who make things with Creative Commons have the ideal authors to write Made with Creative
ulterior motives, as Paul Stacey explains in this Commons.
book: “Regardless of legal status, they all have Paul dreams of a future where new mod-
a social mission. Their primary reason for be- els of creativity and innovation overpower the
ing is to make the world a better place, not to inequality and scarcity that today define the
profit. Money is a means to a social end, not worst parts of capitalism. He is driven by the
the end itself.” power of human connections between com-
In the case study about Cory Doctorow, Sar- munities of creators. He takes a longer view
ah Hinchliff Pearson cites Cory’s words from than most, and it’s made him a better educa-
his book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: tor, an insightful researcher, and also a skilled
“Entering the arts because you want to get rich gardener. He has a calm, cool voice that con-
is like buying lottery tickets because you want veys a passion that inspires his colleagues and
to get rich. It might work, but it almost certain- community.
ly won’t. Though, of course, someone always Sarah is the best kind of lawyer—a true
wins the lottery.” advocate who believes in the good of people,
Today, copyright is like a lottery ticket— and the power of collective acts to change
everyone has one, and almost nobody wins. the world. Over the past year I’ve seen Sarah
What they don’t tell you is that if you choose struggle with the heartbreak that comes from
to share your work, the returns can be signif- investing so much into a political campaign
icant and long-lasting. This book is filled with that didn’t end as she’d hoped. Today, she’s
stories of those who take much greater risks more determined than ever to live with her
than the two dollars we pay for a lottery ticket, values right out on her sleeve. I can always
and instead reap the rewards that come from count on Sarah to push Creative Commons to
pursuing their passions and living their values. focus on our impact—to make the main thing
So it’s not about the money. Also: it is. Find- the main thing. She’s practical, detail-oriented,
ing the means to continue to create and share and clever. There’s no one on my team that I
often requires some amount of income. Max enjoy debating more.
Temkin of Cards Against Humanity says it best
Made With Creative Commons xi
As coauthors, Paul and Sarah complement Jonathan Mann, who is profiled in this book,
each other perfectly. They researched, ana- writes a song a day. When I reached out to ask
lyzed, argued, and worked as a team, some- him to write a song for our Kickstarter (and to
times together and sometimes independently. offer himself up as a Kickstarter benefit), he
They dove into the research and writing with agreed immediately. Why would he agree to
passion and curiosity, and a deep respect for do that? Because the commons has collabora-
what goes into building the commons and tion at its core, and community as a key value,
sharing with the world. They remained open and because the CC licenses have helped so
to new ideas, including the possibility that many to share in the ways that they choose
their initial theories would need refinement with a global audience.
or might be completely wrong. That’s coura- Sarah writes, “Endeavors that are Made
geous, and it has made for a better book that with Creative Commons thrive when com-
is insightful, honest, and useful. munity is built around what they do. This may
From the beginning, CC wanted to develop mean a community collaborating together to
this project with the principles and values of create something new, or it may simply be a
open collaboration. The book was funded, de- collection of like-minded people who get to
veloped, researched, and written in the open. know each other and rally around common in-
It is being shared openly under a CC BY-SA li- terests or beliefs. To a certain extent, simply
cense for anyone to use, remix, or adapt with being Made with Creative Commons auto-
attribution. It is, in itself, an example of an matically brings with it some element of com-
open business model. munity, by helping connect you to like-minded
For 31 days in August of 2015, Sarah took others who recognize and are drawn to the val-
point to organize and execute a Kickstarter ues symbolized by using CC.” Amanda Palmer,
campaign to generate the core funding for the the other musician profiled in the book, would
book. The remainder was provided by CC’s surely add this from her case study: “There is
generous donors and supporters. In the end, no more satisfying end goal than having some-
it became one of the most successful book one tell you that what you do is genuinely of
projects on Kickstarter, smashing through value to them.”
two stretch goals and engaging over 1,600 do-
nors—the majority of them new supporters of
Creative Commons.
Paul and Sarah worked openly throughout This is not a typical business book. For those
the project, publishing the plans, drafts, case looking for a recipe or a roadmap, you might
studies, and analysis, early and often, and be disappointed. But for those looking to pur-
they engaged communities all over the world sue a social end, to build something great
to help write this book. As their opinions di- through collaboration, or to join a powerful
verged and their interests came into focus, and growing global community, they’re sure
they divided their voices and decided to keep to be satisfied. Made with Creative Commons of-
them separate in the final product. Working in fers a world-changing set of clearly articulated
this way requires both humility and self-confi- values and principles, some essential tools for
dence, and without question it has made Made exploring your own business opportunities,
with Creative Commons a better project. and two dozen doses of pure inspiration.
Those who work and share in the com- In a 1996 Stanford Law Review article “The
mons are not typical creators. They are part of Zones of Cyberspace”, CC founder Lawrence Les-
something greater than themselves, and what sig wrote, “Cyberspace is a place. People live
they offer us all is a profound gift. What they there. They experience all the sorts of things
receive in return is gratitude and a community. that they experience in real space, there. For
xii Made With Creative Commons
some, they experience more. They experience
this not as isolated individuals, playing some
high tech computer game; they experience it
in groups, in communities, among strangers,
among people they come to know, and some-
times like.”
I’m incredibly proud that Creative Com-
mons is able to publish this book for the many
communities that we have come to know and
like. I’m grateful to Paul and Sarah for their cre-
ativity and insights, and to the global commu-
nities that have helped us bring it to you. As CC
board member Johnathan Nightingale often
says, “It’s all made of people.”
That’s the true value of things that are Made
with Creative Commons.
Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons
Made With Creative Commons xiii
xiv Made With Creative Commons
INTRODUCTION
This book shows the world how sharing can be They often didn’t like hearing what they do
good for business—but with a twist. described as an open business model. Their
We began the project intending to explore endeavor was something more than that.
how creators, organizations, and businesses Something different. Something that gener-
make money to sustain what they do when ates not just economic value but social and
they share their work using Creative Com- cultural value. Something that involves human
mons licenses. Our goal was not to identify a connection. Being Made with Creative Com-
formula for business models that use Creative mons is not “business as usual.”
Commons but instead gather fresh ideas and We had to rethink the way we conceived of
dynamic examples that spark new, innovative this project. And it didn’t happen overnight.
models and help others follow suit by build- From the fall of 2015 through 2016, we docu-
ing on what already works. At the onset, we mented our thoughts in blog posts on Medium
framed our investigation in familiar business and with regular updates to our Kickstarter
terms. We created a blank “open business backers. We shared drafts of case studies and
model canvas,” an interactive online tool that analysis with our Kickstarter cocreators, who
would help people design and analyze their provided invaluable edits, feedback, and ad-
business model. vice. Our thinking changed dramatically over
Through the generous funding of Kickstart- the course of a year and a half.
er backers, we set about this project first by Throughout the process, the two of us have
identifying and selecting a diverse group of often had very different ways of understand-
creators, organizations, and businesses who ing and describing what we were learning.
use Creative Commons in an integral way— Learning from each other has been one of the
what we call being Made with Creative Com- great joys of this work, and, we hope, some-
mons. We interviewed them and wrote up thing that has made the final product much
their stories. We analyzed what we heard and richer than it ever could have been if either of
dug deep into the literature. us undertook this project alone. We have pre-
But as we did our research, something in- served our voices throughout, and you’ll be
teresting happened. Our initial way of framing able to sense our different but complementa-
the work did not match the stories we were ry approaches as you read through our differ-
hearing. ent sections.
Those we interviewed were not typical busi- While we recommend that you read the
nesses selling to consumers and seeking to book from start to finish, each section reads
maximize profits and the bottom line. Instead, more or less independently. The book is struc-
they were sharing to make the world a better tured into two main parts.
place, creating relationships and community
around the works being shared, and generat- Part one, the overview, begins with a
ing revenue not for unlimited growth but to big-picture framework written by Paul. He pro-
sustain the operation. vides some historical context for the digital
commons, describing the three ways society
Made With Creative Commons xv
has managed resources and shared wealth—
the commons, the market, and the state. He
advocates for thinking beyond business and
market terms and eloquently makes the case
for sharing and enlarging the digital commons.
The overview continues with Sarah’s chap-
ter, as she considers what it means to be suc-
cessfully Made with Creative Commons.
While making money is one piece of the pie,
there is also a set of public-minded values and
the kind of human connections that make
sharing truly meaningful. This section outlines
the ways the creators, organizations, and busi-
nesses we interviewed bring in revenue, how
they further the public interest and live out
their values, and how they foster connections
with the people with whom they share.
And to end part one, we have a short sec-
tion that explains the different Creative Com-
mons licenses. We talk about the misconcep-
tion that the more restrictive licenses—the
ones that are closest to the all-rights-reserved
model of traditional copyright—are the only
ways to make money.
Part two of the book is made up of the twen-
ty-four stories of the creators, businesses, and
organizations we interviewed. While both of us
participated in the interviews, we divided up
the writing of these profiles.
Of course, we are pleased to make the book
available using a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion-ShareAlike license. Please copy, distribute,
translate, localize, and build upon this work.
Writing this book has transformed and in-
spired us. The way we now look at and think
about what it means to be Made with Creative
Commons has irrevocably changed. We hope
this book inspires you and your enterprise to
use Creative Commons and in so doing con-
tribute to the transformation of our economy
and world for the better.
Paul and Sarah
xvi Made With Creative Commons
Part 1
THE BIG PICTURE
Made With Creative Commons 1
2 Made With Creative Commons
THE NEW
WORLD OF
DIGITAL
1
COMMONS
PAUL STACEY
Jonathan Rowe eloquently describes the com- Creative Commons to share their resources
mons as “the air and oceans, the web of spe- online over the Internet.
cies, wilderness and flowing water—all are The commons is not just about shared re-
parts of the commons. So are language and sources, however. It’s also about the social
knowledge, sidewalks and public squares, practices and values that manage them. A re-
the stories of childhood and the processes of source is a noun, but to common—to put the
democracy. Some parts of the commons are resource into the commons—is a verb.2 The
gifts of nature, others the product of human creators, organizations, and businesses we
endeavor. Some are new, such as the Internet; profile are all engaged with commoning. Their
others are as ancient as soil and calligraphy.”1 use of Creative Commons involves them in the
In Made with Creative Commons, we focus social practice of commoning, managing re-
on our current era of digital commons, a com- sources in a collective manner with a commu-
mons of human-produced works. This com- nity of users.3 Commoning is guided by a set of
mons cuts across a broad range of areas in- values and norms that balance the costs and
cluding cultural heritage, education, research, benefits of the enterprise with those of the
technology, art, design, literature, entertain- community. Special regard is given to equita-
ment, business, and data. Human-produced ble access, use, and sustainability.
works in all these areas are increasingly dig-
ital. The Internet is a kind of global, digital
commons. The individuals, organizations, and
businesses we profile in our case studies use
Made With Creative Commons 3
The Commons, the Market, and tiny or even absent. Other case studies are pri-
the State marily market-based with only a small engage-
Historically, there have been three ways to ment with the commons. A depiction of those
manage resources and share wealth: the com- case studies would show the market sphere as
mons (managed collectively), the state (i.e., the large and the commons sphere as small. The
government), and the market—with the last extent to which an enterprise sees itself as be-
two being the dominant forms today.4 ing primarily of one type or another affects the
The organizations and businesses in our balance of norms by which they operate.
case studies are unique in the way they par- All our case studies generate money as a
ticipate in the commons while still engaging means of livelihood and sustainability. Money
with the market and/or state. The extent of is primarily of the market. Finding ways to gen-
engagement with market or state varies. Some erate revenue while holding true to the core
operate primarily as a commons with minimal values of the commons (usually expressed in
or no reliance on the market or state.5 Others mission statements) is challenging. To man-
are very much a part of the market or state, age interaction and engagement between
depending on them for financial sustainabili- the commons and the market requires a deft
ty. All operate as hybrids, blending the norms touch, a strong sense of values, and the ability
of the commons with those of the market or to blend the best of both.
state. The state has an important role to play in
Fig. 1. is a depiction of how an enterprise fostering the use and adoption of the com-
can have varying levels of engagement with mons. State programs and funding can delib-
commons, state, and market. erately contribute to and build the commons.
Some of our case studies are simply com- Beyond money, laws and regulations regard-
mons and market enterprises with little or no ing property, copyright, business, and finance
engagement with the state. A depiction of those can all be designed to foster the commons.
case studies would show the state sphere as
Fig. 1. Enterprise engagement with commons, state, and market.
4 Made With Creative Commons
It’s helpful to understand how the commons, ment: resource characteristics, the people in-
market, and state manage resources different- volved and the process they use, the norms
ly, and not just for those who consider them- and rules they develop to govern use, and fi-
selves primarily as a commons. For businesses nally actual resource use along with outcomes
or governmental organizations who want to of that use (see Fig. 2).
engage in and use the commons, knowing how
the commons operates will help them under- Characteristics
stand how best to do so. Participating in and Resources have particular characteristics or
using the commons the same way you do the attributes that affect the way they can be used.
market or state is not a strategy for success. Some resources are natural; others are human
produced. And—significantly for today’s com-
The Four Aspects of a Resource mons—resources can be physical or digital,
As part of her Nobel Prize–winning work, Eli- which affects a resource’s inherent potential.
nor Ostrom developed a framework for ana- Physical resources exist in limited supply. If
lyzing how natural resources are managed in a I have a physical resource and give it to you, I
commons.6 Her framework considered things no longer have it. When a resource is removed
like the biophysical characteristics of common and used, the supply becomes scarce or de-
resources, the community’s actors and the pleted. Scarcity can result in competing rivalry
interactions that take place between them, for the resource. Made with Creative Com-
rules-in-use, and outcomes. That framework mons enterprises are usually digitally based
has been simplified and generalized to apply but some of our case studies also produce
to the commons, the market, and the state for resources in physical form. The costs of pro-
this chapter. ducing and distributing a physical good usually
To compare and contrast the ways in which require them to engage with the market.
the commons, market, and state work, let’s Physical resources are depletable, exclu-
consider four aspects of resource manage- sive, and rivalrous. Digital resources, on the
other hand, are nondepletable, nonexclusive,
PE and nonrivalrous. If I share a digital resource
ICS PR OP
IST
with you, we both have the resource. Giving it
OC
ER D WHO to you does not mean I no longer have it. Dig-
UCE W H O CAN
LE SE
OD ANT
P R U N D I TAL D I R E HA A C
ital resources can be infinitely stored, copied,
ES
T
R A B DIG CT S
and distributed without becoming depleted,
AC
O
&
OR
CE U T D I R E
ICA O O
and at close to zero cost. Abundance rather
A IN
L R
SS H O R C T
R
S C A RU R A L
C HA R
PHYS C E
than scarcity is an inherent characteristic of
S
OR I T Y
NAT
digital resources.
USE
The nondepletable, nonexclusive, and non-
AS CTIVE
rivalrous nature of digital resources means
I N F OO R M
S
NOR
URE
the rules and norms for managing them can
F
E EX O M E
RM AL
M ET R A
(and ought to) be different from how physi-
AL
TC
( L( N O OU
MS
AW RMS E OR M cal resources are managed. However, this is
S
LS
U E O
S) )
& IV C
ADDI T O UT
A
not always the case. Digital resources are fre-
GO
USE
RU quently made artificially scarce. Placing digital
LES resources in the commons makes them free
and abundant.
Our case studies frequently manage hybrid
resources, which start out as digital with the
Fig. 2. Four aspects of resource management. possibility of being made into a physical re-
source. The digital file of a book can be print-
Made With Creative Commons 5
ed on paper and made into a physical book. resources based on government priorities and
A computer-rendered design for furniture can procedures.
be physically manufactured in wood. This con- In the market, the people involved are pro-
version from digital to physical invariably has ducers, buyers, sellers, and consumers. Busi-
costs. Often the digital resources are managed nesses act as intermediaries between those
in a free and open way, but money is charged who produce resources and those who con-
to convert a digital resource into a physical one. sume or use them. Market processes seek
Beyond this idea of physical versus digital, to extract as much monetary value from re-
the commons, market, and state conceive of sources as possible. In the market, resourc-
resources differently (see Fig. 3). The market es are managed as commodities, frequently
sees resources as private goods—commod- mass-produced, and sold to consumers on the
ities for sale—from which value is extracted. basis of a cash transaction.
The state sees resources as public goods that In contrast to the state and market, resourc-
provide value to state citizens. The commons es in a commons are managed more directly
sees resources as common goods, providing by the people involved.7 Creators of human
a common wealth extending beyond state produced resources can put them in the com-
boundaries, to be passed on in undiminished mons by personal choice. No permission from
or enhanced form to future generations. state or market is required. Anyone can par-
ticipate in the commons and determine for
People and processes themselves the extent to which they want to
In the commons, the market, and the state, dif- be involved—as a contributor, user, or manag-
ferent people and processes are used to man- er. The people involved include not only those
age resources. The processes used define both who create and use resources but those af-
who has a say and how a resource is managed. fected by outcome of use. Who you are affects
In the state, a government of elected offi- your say, actions you can take, and extent of
cials is responsible for managing resources decision making. In the commons, the com-
on behalf of the public. The citizens who pro- munity as a whole manages the resources. Re-
duce and use those resources are not directly sources put into the commons using Creative
involved; instead, that responsibility is given Commons require users to give the original
over to the government. State ministries and creator credit. Knowing the person behind
departments staffed with public servants set a resource makes the commons less anony-
budgets, implement programs, and manage mous and more personal.
E ASS
VAT E UB
LIC ASSE
RI
N RESOU
T
P
T
MO
P
COM
RC
E
Fig. 3. How the market, commons, and state conceive of resources.
6 Made With Creative Commons
Norms and rules applies its resources toward these aims. State
The social interactions between people, and goals are reflected in quality of life measures.
the processes used by the state, market, and In the commons, the goal is maximizing ac-
commons, evolve social norms and rules. cess, equity, distribution, participation, inno-
These norms and rules define permissions, al- vation, and sustainability. You can measure
locate entitlements, and resolve disputes. success by looking at how many people access
State authority is governed by national con- and use a resource; how users are distributed
stitutions. Norms related to priorities and de- across gender, income, and location; if a com-
cision making are defined by elected officials munity to extend and enhance the resources
and parliamentary procedures. State rules are is being formed; and if the resources are being
expressed through policies, regulations, and used in innovative ways for personal and so-
laws. The state influences the norms and rules cial good.
of the market and commons through the rules As hybrid combinations of the commons
it passes. with the market or state, the success and sus-
Market norms are influenced by economics tainability of all our case study enterprises
and competition for scarce resources. Market depends on their ability to strategically utilize
rules follow property, business, and financial and balance these different aspects of manag-
laws defined by the state. ing resources.
As with the market, a commons can be influ-
enced by state policies, regulations, and laws. A Short History of the Commons
But the norms and rules of a commons are Using the commons to manage resources is
largely defined by the community. They weigh part of a long historical continuum. However,
individual costs and benefits against the costs in contemporary society, the market and the
and benefits to the whole community. Consid- state dominate the discourse on how resourc-
eration is given not just to economic efficiency es are best managed. Rarely is the commons
but also to equity and sustainability.9 even considered as an option. The commons
has largely disappeared from consciousness
Goals and consideration. There are no news reports
The combination of the aspects we’ve dis- or speeches about the commons.
cussed so far—the resource’s inherent char- But the more than 1.1 billion resources li-
acteristics, people and processes, and norms censed with Creative Commons around the
and rules—shape how resources are used. world are indications of a grassroots move
Use is also influenced by the different goals toward the commons. The commons is mak-
the state, market, and commons have. ing a resurgence. To understand the resilience
In the market, the focus is on maximizing of the commons and its current renewal, it’s
the utility of a resource. What we pay for the helpful to know something of its history.
goods we consume is seen as an objective mea- For centuries, indigenous people and pre-
sure of the utility they provide. The goal then industrialized societies managed resources,
becomes maximizing total monetary value in including water, food, firewood, irrigation, fish,
the economy.10 Units consumed translates to wild game, and many other things collective-
sales, revenue, profit, and growth, and these ly as a commons.11 There was no market, no
are all ways to measure goals of the market. global economy. The state in the form of rul-
The state aims to use and manage resourc- ers influenced the commons but by no means
es in a way that balances the economy with controlled it. Direct social participation in a
the social and cultural needs of its citizens. commons was the primary way in which re-
Health care, education, jobs, the environment, sources were managed and needs met. (Fig. 4
transportation, security, heritage, and justice illustrates the commons in relation to the state
are all facets of a healthy society, and the state and the market.)
Made With Creative Commons 7
LONG AGO:
Fig. 4. In preindustrialized society.
This is followed by a long history of the state migrated to cities. With the emergence of the in-
(a monarchy or ruler) taking over the commons dustrial revolution, land and resources became
for their own purposes. This is called enclosure commodities sold to businesses to support
of the commons.12 In olden days, “commoners” production. Monarchies evolved into elected
were evicted from the land, fences and hedg- parliaments. Commoners became labourers
es erected, laws passed, and security set up to earning money operating the machinery of in-
forbid access.13 Gradually, resources became dustry. Financial, business, and property laws
the property of the state and the state be- were revised by governments to support mar-
came the primary means by which resources kets, growth, and productivity. Over time ready
were managed. (See Fig. 5). access to market produced goods resulted in a
Holdings of land, water, and game were rising standard of living, improved health, and
distributed to ruling family and political ap- education. Fig. 6 shows how today the market
pointees. Commoners displaced from the land
STATE TAKEOVER OF THE COMMONS:
Fig. 5. The commons is gradually superseded by the state.
8 Made With Creative Commons
is the primary means by which resources are directly involved. With natural resources, there
managed. is a regional locality. The people in the region
However, the world today is going through are the most familiar with the natural resource,
turbulent times. The benefits of the market have the most direct relationship and history
have been offset by unequal distribution and with it, and are therefore best situated to man-
overexploitation. age it. Ostrom’s approach to the governance of
Overexploitation was the topic of Garrett natural resources broke with convention; she
Hardin’s influential essay “The Tragedy of the recognized the importance of the commons as
Commons,” published in Science in 1968. Har- an alternative to the market or state for solving
din argues that everyone in a commons seeks problems of collective action.14
to maximize personal gain and will continue to Hardin failed to consider the actual social
do so even when the limits of the commons dynamic of the commons. His model assumed
are reached. The commons is then tragically that people in the commons act autonomous-
depleted to the point where it can no longer ly, out of pure self-interest, without interac-
support anyone. Hardin’s essay became widely tion or consideration of others. But as Ostrom
accepted as an economic truism and a justifi- found, in reality, managing common resources
cation for private property and free markets. together forms a community and encourages
However, there is one serious flaw with Har- discourse. This naturally generates norms and
din’s “The Tragedy of the Commons”—it’s fic- rules that help people work collectively and
tion. Hardin did not actually study how real com- ensure a sustainable commons. Paradoxically,
mons work. Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel while Hardin’s essay is called The Tragedy of
Prize in economics for her work studying differ- the Commons it might more accurately be ti-
ent commons all around the world. Ostrom’s tled The Tragedy of the Market.
work shows that natural resource commons Hardin’s story is based on the premise of de-
can be successfully managed by local com- pletable resources. Economists have focused
munities without any regulation by central au- almost exclusively on scarcity-based markets.
thorities or without privatization. Government Very little is known about how abundance
and privatization are not the only two choices. works.15 The emergence of information tech-
There is a third way: management by the peo- nology and the Internet has led to an explosion
ple, where those that are directly impacted are in digital resources and new means of sharing
TODAY:
Fig. 6. How the market, the state, and the commons look today.
Made With Creative Commons 9
and distribution. Digital resources can never open-source software also generated a net-
be depleted. An absence of a theory or mod- work effect where the value of a product or
el for how abundance works, however, has led service increases with the number of people
the market to make digital resources artificially using it.17 The dramatic growth of the Internet
scarce and makes it possible for the usual mar- itself owes much to the fact that nobody has
ket norms and rules to be applied. a proprietary lock on core Internet protocols.
When it comes to use of state funds to cre- While open-source software functions as a
ate digital goods, however, there is really no commons, many businesses and markets did
justification for artificial scarcity. The norm for build up around it. Business models based
state funded digital works should be that they on the licenses and standards of open-source
are freely and openly available to the public software evolved alongside organizations that
that paid for them. managed software code on principles of abun-
dance rather than scarcity. Eric Raymond’s es-
The Digital Revolution say “The Magic Cauldron” does a great job of
In the early days of computing, programmers analyzing the economics and business models
and developers learned from each other by associated with open-source software.18 These
sharing software. In the 1980s, the free-soft- models can provide examples of sustainable
ware movement codified this practice of shar- approaches for those Made with Creative
ing into a set of principles and freedoms: Commons.
It isn’t just about an abundant availability
• The freedom to run a software program as of digital assets but also about abundance of
you wish, for any purpose. participation. The growth of personal comput-
ing, information technology, and the Internet
• The freedom to study how a software pro- made it possible for mass participation in pro-
gram works (because access to the source ducing creative works and distributing them.
code has been freely given), and change it Photos, books, music, and many other forms
so it does your computing as you wish. of digital content could now be readily creat-
ed and distributed by almost anyone. Despite
• The freedom to redistribute copies. this potential for abundance, by default these
digital works are governed by copyright laws.
• The freedom to distribute copies of your Under copyright, a digital work is the property
modified versions to others.16 of the creator, and by law others are excluded
from accessing and using it without the cre-
These principles and freedoms constitute a set ator’s permission.
of norms and rules that typify a digital com- But people like to share. One of the ways we
mons. define ourselves is by sharing valuable and en-
In the late 1990s, to make the sharing of tertaining content. Doing so grows and nour-
source code and collaboration more appeal- ishes relationships, seeks to change opinions,
ing to companies, the open-source-software encourages action, and informs others about
initiative converted these principles into li- who we are and what we care about. Sharing
censes and standards for managing access lets us feel more involved with the world.19
to and distribution of software. The benefits
of open source—such as reliability, scalabil- The Birth of Creative Commons
ity, and quality verified by independent peer In 2001, Creative Commons was created as a
review—became widely recognized and ac- nonprofit to support all those who wanted to
cepted. Customers liked the way open source share digital content. A suite of Creative Com-
gave them control without being locked into mons licenses was modeled on those of open-
a closed, proprietary technology. Free and source software but for use with digital con-
10 Made With Creative Commons
tent rather than software code. The licenses ipation has been spurred by the free-culture
give everyone from individual creators to large movement, a social movement that promotes
companies and institutions a simple, stan- the freedom to distribute and modify cre-
dardized way to grant copyright permissions ative works. The free-culture movement sees
to their creative work. a commons as providing significant benefits
Creative Commons licenses have a three-lay- compared to restrictive copyright laws. This
er design. The norms and rules of each license ethos of free exchange in a commons aligns
are first expressed in full legal language as the free-culture movement with the free and
used by lawyers. This layer is called the legal open-source software movement.
code. But since most creators and users are Over time, Creative Commons has spawned
not lawyers, the licenses also have a commons a range of open movements, including open
deed, expressing the permissions in plain lan- educational resources, open access, open sci-
guage, which regular people can read and ence, and open data. The goal in every case
quickly understand. It acts as a user-friend- has been to democratize participation and
ly interface to the legal-code layer beneath. share digital resources at no cost, with legal
The third layer is the machine-readable one, permissions for anyone to freely access, use,
making it easy for the Web to know a work and modify.
is Creative Commons–licensed by expressing The state is increasingly involved in support-
permissions in a way that software systems, ing open movements. The Open Government
search engines, and other kinds of technolo- Partnership was launched in 2011 to provide
gy can understand.20 Taken together, these an international platform for governments to
three layers ensure creators, users, and even become more open, accountable, and respon-
the Web itself understand the norms and rules sive to citizens. Since then, it has grown from
associated with digital content in a commons. eight participating countries to seventy.22 In all
In 2015, there were over one billion Cre- these countries, government and civil society
ative Commons licensed works in a global are working together to develop and imple-
commons. These works were viewed online ment ambitious open-government reforms.
136 billion times. People are using Creative Governments are increasingly adopting Cre-
Commons licenses all around the world, in ative Commons to ensure works funded with
thirty-four languages. These resources include taxpayer dollars are open and free to the pub-
photos, artwork, research articles in journals, lic that paid for them.
educational resources, music and other audio
tracks, and videos. The Changing Market
Individual artists, photographers, musi- Today’s market is largely driven by global cap-
cians, and filmmakers use Creative Commons, italism. Law and financial systems are struc-
but so do museums, governments, creative tured to support extraction, privatization, and
industries, manufacturers, and publishers. corporate growth. A perception that the mar-
Millions of websites use CC licenses, includ- ket is more efficient than the state has led to
ing major platforms like Wikipedia and Flickr continual privatization of many public natural
and smaller ones like blogs.21 Users of Creative resources, utilities, services, and infrastruc-
Commons are diverse and cut across many dif- tures.23 While this system has been highly ef-
ferent sectors. (Our case studies were chosen ficient at generating consumerism and the
to reflect that diversity.) growth of gross domestic product, the impact
Some see Creative Commons as a way on human well-being has been mixed. Offset-
to share a gift with others, a way of getting ting rising living standards and improvements
known, or a way to provide social benefit. Oth- to health and education are ever-increasing
ers are simply committed to the norms asso- wealth inequality, social inequality, poverty,
ciated with a commons. And for some, partic-
Made With Creative Commons 11
deterioration of our natural environment, and economic rules than physical ones. In a world
breakdowns of democracy.24 where prices always seem to go up, informa-
In light of these challenges there is a grow- tion technology is an anomaly. Computer-pro-
ing recognition that GDP growth should not be cessing power, storage, and bandwidth are all
an end in itself, that development needs to be rapidly increasing, but rather than costs going
socially and economically inclusive, that envi- up, costs are coming down. Digital technolo-
ronmental sustainability is a requirement not gies are getting faster, better, and cheaper. The
an option, and that we need to better balance cost of anything built on these technologies
the market, state and community.25 will always go down until it is close to zero.29
These realizations have led to a resurgence Those that are Made with Creative Com-
of interest in the commons as a means of en- mons are looking to leverage the unique
abling that balance. City governments like inherent characteristics of digital resourc-
Bologna, Italy, are collaborating with their cit- es, including lowering costs. The use of dig-
izens to put in place regulations for the care ital-rights-management technologies in the
and regeneration of urban commons.26 Seoul form of locks, passwords, and controls to
and Amsterdam call themselves “sharing cit- prevent digital goods from being accessed,
ies,” looking to make sustainable and more changed, replicated, and distributed is minimal
efficient use of scarce resources. They see or nonexistent. Instead, Creative Commons li-
sharing as a way to improve the use of public censes are used to put digital content out in
spaces, mobility, social cohesion, and safety.27 the commons, taking advantage of the unique
The market itself has taken an interest in economics associated with being digital. The
the sharing economy, with businesses like aim is to see digital resources used as widely
Airbnb providing a peer-to-peer marketplace and by as many people as possible. Maximiz-
for short-term lodging and Uber providing a ing access and participation is a common goal.
platform for ride sharing. However, Airbnb and They aim for abundance over scarcity.
Uber are still largely operating under the usual The incremental cost of storing, copying,
norms and rules of the market, making them and distributing digital goods is next to zero,
less like a commons and more like a tradition- making abundance possible. But imagining a
al business seeking financial gain. Much of the market based on abundance rather than scar-
sharing economy is not about the commons city is so alien to the way we conceive of eco-
or building an alternative to a corporate-driv- nomic theory and practice that we struggle to
en market economy; it’s about extending the do so.30 Those that are Made with Creative
deregulated free market into new areas of Commons are each pioneering in this new
our lives.28 While none of the people we inter- landscape, devising their own economic mod-
viewed for our case studies would describe els and practice.
themselves as part of the sharing economy, Some are looking to minimize their inter-
there are in fact some significant parallels. actions with the market and operate as au-
Both the sharing economy and the commons tonomously as possible. Others are operating
make better use of asset capacity. The sharing largely as a business within the existing rules
economy sees personal residents and cars as and norms of the market. And still others are
having latent spare capacity with rental value. looking to change the norms and rules by
The equitable access of the commons broad- which the market operates.
ens and diversifies the number of people who For an ordinary corporation, making social
can use and derive value from an asset. benefit a part of its operations is difficult, as
One way Made with Creative Commons it’s legally required to make decisions that fi-
case studies differ from those of the shar- nancially benefit stockholders. But new forms
ing economy is their focus on digital resourc- of business are emerging. There are benefit
es. Digital resources function under different corporations and social enterprises, which
12 Made With Creative Commons
broaden their business goals from making a The creators, businesses, and organizations
profit to making a positive impact on society, we profile all engage with the market to gen-
workers, the community, and the environ- erate revenue in some way. The ways in which
ment.31 Community-owned businesses, work- this is done vary widely. Donations, pay what
er-owned businesses, cooperatives, guilds, you can, memberships, “digital for free but
and other organizational forms offer alterna- physical for a fee,” crowdfunding, matchmak-
tives to the traditional corporation. Collective- ing, value-add services, patrons . . . the list goes
ly, these alternative market entities are chang- on and on. (Initial description of how to earn
ing the rules and norms of the market.32 revenue available through reference note. For
“A book on open business models” is how latest thinking see How to Bring In Money in
we described it in this book’s Kickstarter cam- the next section.) 36 There is no single magic
paign. We used a handbook called Business bullet, and each endeavor has devised ways
Model Generation as our reference for defining that work for them. Most make use of more
just what a business model is. Developed over than one way. Diversifying revenue streams
nine years using an “open process” involving lowers risk and provides multiple paths to sus-
470 coauthors from forty-five countries, it is tainability.
useful as a framework for talking about busi-
ness models.33 Benefits of the Digital Commons
It contains a “business model canvas,” which While it may be clear why commons-based or-
conceives of a business model as having nine ganizations want to interact and engage with
building blocks.34 This blank canvas can serve the market (they need money to survive), it
as a tool for anyone to design their own busi- may be less obvious why the market would en-
ness model. We remixed this business model gage with the commons. The digital commons
canvas into an open business model canvas, offers many benefits.
adding three more building blocks relevant The commons speeds dissemination. The free
to hybrid market, commons enterprises: so- flow of resources in the commons offers tre-
cial good, Creative Commons license, and “type mendous economies of scale. Distribution is
of open environment that the business fits in.” 35 decentralized, with all those in the commons
This enhanced canvas proved useful when empowered to share the resources they have
we analyzed businesses and helped start-ups access to. Those that are Made with Creative
plan their economic model. Commons have a reduced need for sales or
In our case study interviews, many ex- marketing. Decentralized distribution ampli-
pressed discomfort over describing them- fies supply and know-how.
selves as an open business model—the term The commons ensures access to all. The mar-
business model suggested primarily being ket has traditionally operated by putting re-
situated in the market. Where you sit on the sources behind a paywall requiring payment
commons-to-market spectrum affects the ex- first before access. The commons puts re-
tent to which you see yourself as a business in sources in the open, providing access up front
the market. The more central to the mission without payment. Those that are Made with
shared resources and commons values are, Creative Commons make little or no use of
the less comfort there is in describing your- digital rights management (DRM) to manage
self, or depicting what you do, as a business. resources. Not using DRM frees them of the
Not all who have endeavors Made with Cre- costs of acquiring DRM technology and staff
ative Commons use business speak; for some resources to engage in the punitive practices
the process has been experimental, emergent, associated with restricting access. The way the
and organic rather than carefully planned us- commons provides access to everyone levels
ing a predefined model. the playing field and promotes inclusiveness,
equity, and fairness.
Made With Creative Commons 13
The commons maximizes participation. Re- itized resources persist without becoming
sources in the commons can be used and con- depleted, and through use are improved, per-
tributed to by everyone. Using the resources sonalized, and localized. Each use adds value.
of others, contributing your own, and mixing The market focuses on generating value for
yours with others to create new works are all the business and the customer. The commons
dynamic forms of participation made possible generates value for a broader range of bene-
by the commons. Being Made with Creative ficiaries including the business, the custom-
Commons means you’re engaging as many us- er, the creator, the public, and the commons
ers with your resources as possible. Users are itself. The generative nature of the commons
also authoring, editing, remixing, curating, lo- means that it is more cost-effective and pro-
calizing, translating, and distributing. The com- duces a greater return on investment. Value is
mons makes it possible for people to directly not just measured in financial terms. Each new
participate in culture, knowledge building, and resource added to the commons provides val-
even democracy, and many other socially ben- ue to the public and contributes to the overall
eficial practices. value of the commons.
The commons spurs innovation. Resources in The commons brings people together for a
the hands of more people who can use them common cause. The commons vests people
leads to new ideas. The way commons resourc- directly with the responsibility to manage the
es can be modified, customized, and improved resources for the common good. The costs
results in derivative works never imagined by and benefits for the individual are balanced
the original creator. Some endeavors that are with the costs and benefits for the communi-
Made with Creative Commons deliberately ty and for future generations. Resources are
encourage users to take the resources being not anonymous or mass produced. Their prov-
shared and innovate them. Doing so moves enance is known and acknowledged through
research and development (R&D) from being attribution and other means. Those that are
solely inside the organization to being in the Made with Creative Commons generate
community.37 Community-based innovation awareness and reputation based on their con-
will keep an organization or business on its tributions to the commons. The reach, impact,
toes. It must continue to contribute new ideas, and sustainability of those contributions rest
absorb and build on top of the innovations of largely on their ability to forge relationships
others, and steward the resources and the re- and connections with those who use and im-
lationship with the community. prove them. By functioning on the basis of so-
The commons boosts reach and impact. The cial engagement, not monetary exchange, the
digital commons is global. Resources may be commons unifies people.
created for a local or regional need, but they go The benefits of the commons are many.
far and wide generating a global impact. In the When these benefits align with the goals of
digital world, there are no borders between individuals, communities, businesses in the
countries. When you are Made with Creative market, or state enterprises, choosing to man-
Commons, you are often local and global at age resources as a commons ought to be the
the same time: Digital designs being globally option of choice.
distributed but made and manufactured lo-
cally. Digital books or music being globally dis- Our Case Studies
tributed but readings and concerts performed The creators, organizations, and business-
locally. The digital commons magnifies impact es in our case studies operate as nonprofits,
by connecting creators to those who use and for-profits, and social enterprises. Regardless
build on their work both locally and globally. of legal status, they all have a social mission.
The commons is generative. Instead of ex- Their primary reason for being is to make the
tracting value, the commons adds value. Dig- world a better place, not to profit. Money is a
14 Made With Creative Commons
means to a social end, not the end itself. They Give more than you take. Be open and inclu-
factor public interest into decisions, behavior, sive. Add value. Make visible what you are us-
and practices. Transparency and trust are re- ing from the commons, what you are adding,
ally important. Impact and success are mea- and what you are monetizing. Maximize abun-
sured against social aims expressed in mission dance. Give attribution. Express gratitude. De-
statements, and are not just about the finan- velop trust; don’t exploit. Build relationship
cial bottom line. and community. Be transparent. Defend the
The case studies are based on the narra- commons.
tives told to us by founders and key staff. In- The new digital commons is here to stay.
stead of solely using financials as the measure Made With Creative Commons case studies
of success and sustainability, they emphasized show how it’s possible to be part of this com-
their mission, practices, and means by which mons while still functioning within market and
they measure success. Metrics of success are state systems. The commons generates ben-
a blend of how social goals are being met and efits neither the market nor state can achieve
how sustainable the enterprise is. on their own. Rather than the market or state
Our case studies are diverse, ranging from dominating as primary means of resource
publishing to education and manufacturing. All management, a more balanced alternative is
of the organizations, businesses, and creators possible.
in the case studies produce digital resources. Enterprise use of Creative Commons has
Those resources exist in many forms including only just begun. The case studies in this book
books, designs, songs, research, data, cultur- are merely starting points. Each is changing
al works, education materials, graphic icons, and evolving over time. Many more are join-
and video. Some are digital representations of ing and inventing new models. This overview
physical resources. Others are born digital but aims to provide a framework and language
can be made into physical resources. for thinking and talking about the new digital
They are creating new resources, or using commons. The remaining sections go deeper
the resources of others, or mixing existing providing further guidance and insights on
resources together to make something new. how it works.
They, and their audience, all play a direct, par-
ticipatory role in managing those resources,
including their preservation, curation, distri-
bution, and enhancement. Access and partic-
ipation is open to all regardless of monetary
means.
And as users of Creative Commons licenses,
they are automatically part of a global commu-
nity. The new digital commons is global. Those
we profiled come from nearly every continent
in the world. To build and interact within this
global community is conducive to success.
Creative Commons licenses may express le-
gal rules around the use of resources in a com-
mons, but success in the commons requires
more than following the letter of the law and
acquiring financial means. Over and over we
heard in our interviews how success and sus-
tainability are tied to a set of beliefs, values,
and principles that underlie their actions:
Made With Creative Commons 15
Notes 12 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 55–78.
1 Jonathan Rowe, Our Common Wealth (San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2013), 14. 13 Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei, The Ecolo-
gy of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune
2 David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A with Nature and Community (Oakland, CA:
Short Introduction to the Life of the Com- Berrett-Koehler, 2015), 46–57; and Bollier,
mons (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, Think Like a Commoner, 88.
2014), 176.
14 Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison,
3 Ibid., 15. and Katherine J. Strandburg, “Governing
Knowledge Commons,” in Frischmann,
4 Ibid., 145. Madison, and Strandburg Governing
Knowledge Commons, 12.
5 Ibid., 175.
15 Farley and Kubiszewski, “Economics of
6 Daniel H. Cole, “Learning from Lin: Les- Information,” in Elliott and Hepting, Free
sons and Cautions from the Natural Knowledge, 203.
Commons for the Knowledge Commons,”
in Governing Knowledge Commons, eds. 16 “What Is Free Software?” GNU Operating
Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, System, the Free Software Foundation’s
and Katherine J. Strandburg (New York: Licensing and Compliance Lab, accessed
Oxford University Press, 2014), 53. December 30, 2016, www.gnu.org
/philosophy/free-sw.
7 Max Haiven, Crises of Imagination, Crises
of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the 17 Wikipedia, s.v. “Open-source software,”
Commons (New York: Zed Books, 2014), last modified November 22, 2016.
93.
18 Eric S. Raymond, “The Magic Cauldron,”
8 Cole, “Learning from Lin,” in Frischmann, in The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings
Madison, and Strandburg, Governing on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental
Knowledge Commons, 59. Revolutionary, rev. ed. (Sebastopol, CA:
O’Reilly Media, 2001), www.catb.org/esr
9 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 175. /writings/cathedral-bazaar/.
10 Joshua Farley and Ida Kubiszewski, “The 19 New York Times Customer Insight Group,
Economics of Information in a Post-Car- The Psychology of Sharing: Why Do People
bon Economy,” in Free Knowledge: Con- Share Online? (New York: New York Times
fronting the Commodification of Human Customer Insight Group, 2011), www.iab
Discovery, eds. Patricia W. Elliott and Daryl .net/media/file/POSWhitePaper.pdf.
H. Hepting (Regina, SK: University of Regi-
na Press, 2015), 201–4. 20 “Licensing Considerations,” Creative
Commons, accessed December 30, 2016,
11 Rowe, Our Common Wealth, 19; and creativecommons.org/share-your-work
Heather Menzies, Reclaiming the Com- /licensing-considerations/.
mons for the Common Good: A Memoir
and Manifesto (Gabriola Island, BC: New 21 Creative Commons, 2015 State of the Commons
Society, 2014), 42–43. (Mountain View, CA: Creative Commons,
2015), stateof.creativecommons.org/2015/.
16 Made With Creative Commons
22 Wikipedia, s.v. “Open Government Part- Straight Talk about the Next American Rev-
nership,” last modified September 24, olution: Democratizing Wealth and Building
2016, en.wikipedia.org/wiki a Community-Sustaining Economy from
/Open_Government_Partnership. the Ground Up (White River Junction, VT:
Chelsea Green, 2013), 39.
23 Capra and Mattei, Ecology of Law, 114.
32 Marjorie Kelly, Owning Our Future: The
24 Ibid., 116. Emerging Ownership Revolution; Journeys
to a Generative Economy (San Francisco:
25 The Swedish International Development Berrett-Koehler, 2012), 8–9.
Cooperation Agency, “Stockholm State-
ment” accessed February 15, 2017, sida. 33 Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Busi-
se/globalassets/sida/eng/press ness Model Generation (Hoboken, NJ: John
/stockholm-statement.pdf Wiley and Sons, 2010). A preview of the
book is available at strategyzer.com
26 City of Bologna, Regulation on Collabora- /books/business-model-generation.
tion between Citizens and the City for the
Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons, 34 This business model canvas is available to
trans. LabGov (LABoratory for the GOVer- download at strategyzer.com/canvas
nance of Commons) (Bologna, Italy: City /business-model-canvas.
of Bologna, 2014), www.labgov.it
/wp-content/uploads/sites/9 35 We’ve made the “Open Business Model
/Bologna-Regulation-on-collaboration Canvas,” designed by the coauthor Paul
-between-citizens-and-the-city-for Stacey, available online at docs.google
-the-cure-and-regeneration-of .com/drawings/d
-urban-commons1.pdf. /1QOIDa2qak7wZSSOa4Wv6qVMO77Iwk-
KHN7CYyq0wHivs/edit. You can also find
27 The Seoul Sharing City website is english. the accompanying Open Business Model
sharehub.kr; for Amsterdam Sharing City, Canvas Questions at docs.google.com
go to www.sharenl.nl/amsterdam /drawings/d/1kACK7TkoJgsM18HUWC-
-sharing-city/. bX9xuQ0Byna4plSVZXZGTtays/edit.
28 Tom Slee, What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the 36 A more comprehensive list of revenue
Sharing Economy (New York: OR Books, streams is available in this post I wrote
2015), 42. on Medium on March 6, 2016. “What Is an
Open Business Model and How Can You
39 Chris Anderson, Free: How Today’s Smart- Generate Revenue?”, available at
est Businesses Profit by Giving Something medium.com/made-with-creative
for Nothing, Reprint with new preface. -commons/what-is-an-open-business
(New York: Hyperion, 2010), 78. -model-and-how-can-you-generate
-revenue-5854d2659b15.
30 Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Soci-
ety: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative 37 Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The
Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism New Imperative for Creating and Profiting
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), from Technology (Boston: Harvard Busi-
273. ness Review Press, 2006), 31–44.
31 Gar Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do?
Made With Creative Commons 17
18 Made With Creative Commons
HOW
TO BE
MADE WITH
2
CREATIVE
COMMONS
SARAH HINCHLIFF PEARSON
When we began this project in August 2015, we use the licenses, these endeavors share their
set out to write a book about business mod- work—whether it’s open data or furniture de-
els that involve Creative Commons licenses signs—in a way that enables the public not
in some significant way—what we call being only to access it but also to make use of it.
Made with Creative Commons. With the help We analyzed the revenue models, custom-
of our Kickstarter backers, we chose twen- er segments, and value propositions of each
ty-four endeavors from all around the world endeavor. We searched for ways that putting
that are Made with Creative Commons. The their content under Creative Commons licens-
mix is diverse, from an individual musician to a es helped boost sales or increase reach. Using
university-textbook publisher to an electronics traditional measures of economic success, we
manufacturer. Some make their own content tried to map these business models in a way
and share under Creative Commons licensing. that meaningfully incorporated the impact of
Others are platforms for CC-licensed creative Creative Commons. In our interviews, we dug
work made by others. Many sit somewhere in into the motivations, the role of CC licenses,
between, both using and contributing creative modes of revenue generation, definitions of
work that’s shared with the public. Like all who success.
Made With Creative Commons 19
In fairly short order, we realized the book the creators, organizations, and businesses we
we set out to write was quite different from profiled, there was one constant. Being Made
the one that was revealing itself in our inter- with Creative Commons may be good for
views and research. business, but that is not why they do it. Shar-
It isn’t that we were wrong to think you ing work with Creative Commons is, at its core,
can make money while using Creative Com- a moral decision. The commercial and other
mons licenses. In many instances, CC can help self-interested benefits are secondary. Most
make you more money. Nor were we wrong decided to use CC licenses first and found a
that there are business models out there that revenue model later. This was our first hint
others who want to use CC licensing as part that writing a book solely about the impact of
of their livelihood or business could replicate. sharing on business might be a little off track.
What we didn’t realize was just how misguided But we also started to realize something
it would be to write a book about being Made about what it means to be Made with Cre-
with Creative Commons using only a busi- ative Commons. When people talked to us
ness lens. about how and why they used CC, it was clear
According to the seminal handbook Business that it meant something more than using a
Model Generation, a business model “describes copyright license. It also represented a set of
the rationale of how an organization creates, values. There is symbolism behind using CC,
delivers, and captures value.”1 Thinking about and that symbolism has many layers.
sharing in terms of creating and capturing At one level, being Made with Creative
value always felt inappropriately transaction- Commons expresses an affinity for the value
al and out of place, something we heard time of Creative Commons. While there are many
and time again in our interviews. And as Cory different flavors of CC licenses and nearly in-
Doctorow told us in our interview with him, finite ways to be Made with Creative Com-
“Business model can mean anything you want mons, the basic value system is rooted in a
it to mean.” fundamental belief that knowledge and cre-
Eventually, we got it. Being Made with Cre- ativity are building blocks of our culture rather
ative Commons is more than a business mod- than just commodities from which to extract
el. While we will talk about specific revenue market value. These values reflect a belief that
models as one piece of our analysis (and in the common good should always be part of
more detail in the case studies), we scrapped the equation when we determine how to reg-
that as our guiding rubric for the book. ulate our cultural outputs. They reflect a belief
Admittedly, it took me a long time to get that everyone has something to contribute,
there. When Paul and I divided up our writing and that no one can own our shared culture.
after finishing the research, my charge was They reflect a belief in the promise of sharing.
to distill everything we learned from the case Whether the public makes use of the oppor-
studies and write up the practical lessons and tunity to copy and adapt your work, sharing
takeaways. I spent months trying to jam what with a Creative Commons license is a symbol
we learned into the business-model box, con- of how you want to interact with the people
vinced there must be some formula for the who consume your work. Whenever you cre-
way things interacted. But there is no formu- ate something, “all rights reserved” under
la. You’ll probably have to discard that way of copyright is automatic, so the copyright sym-
thinking before you read any further. bol (©) on the work does not necessarily come
across as a marker of distrust or excessive
protectionism. But using a CC license can be a
symbol of the opposite—of wanting a real hu-
In every interview, we started from the same man relationship, rather than an impersonal
simple questions. Amid all the diversity among
20 Made With Creative Commons
market transaction. It leaves open the possi-
bility of connection.
Being Made with Creative Commons not Even if profit isn’t the end goal, you have to
only demonstrates values connected to CC bring in money to be successfully Made with
and sharing. It also demonstrates that some- Creative Commons. At a bare minimum, you
thing other than profit drives what you do. In have to make enough money to keep the lights
our interviews, we always asked what success on.
looked like for them. It was stunning how rare- The costs of doing business vary widely for
ly money was mentioned. Most have a deeper those made with CC, but there is generally a
purpose and a different vision of success. much lower threshold for sustainability than
The driving motivation varies depending on there used to be for any creative endeavor.
the type of endeavor. For individual creators, Digital technology has made it easier than ever
it is most often about personal inspiration. In to create, and easier than ever to distribute. As
some ways, this is nothing new. As Doctorow Doctorow put it in his book Information Doesn’t
has written, “Creators usually start doing what Want to Be Free, “If analog dollars have turned
they do for love.”2 But when you share your into digital dimes (as the critics of ad-support-
creative work under a CC license, that dynamic ed media have it), there is the fact that it’s
is even more pronounced. Similarly, for tech- possible to run a business that gets the same
nological innovators, it is often less about cre- amount of advertising as its forebears at a
ating a specific new thing that will make you fraction of the price.”
rich and more about solving a specific problem Some creation costs are the same as they
you have. The creators of Arduino told us that always were. It takes the same amount of time
the key question when creating something is and money to write a peer-reviewed journal
“Do you as the creator want to use it? It has to article or paint a painting. Technology can’t
have personal use and meaning.” change that. But other costs are dramati-
Many that are Made with Creative Com- cally reduced by technology, particularly in
mons have an express social mission that production-heavy domains like filmmaking.3
underpins everything they do. In many cas- CC-licensed content and content in the public
es, sharing with Creative Commons expressly domain, as well as the work of volunteer col-
advances that social mission, and using the laborators, can also dramatically reduce costs
licenses can be the difference between legiti- if they’re being used as resources to create
macy and hypocrisy. Noun Project co-founder something new. And, of course, there is the
Edward Boatman told us they could not have reality that some content would be created
stated their social mission of sharing with a whether or not the creator is paid because it is
straight face if they weren’t willing to show the a labor of love.
world that it was OK to share their content us- Distributing content is almost universally
ing a Creative Commons license. cheaper than ever. Once content is created,
This dynamic is probably one reason why the costs to distribute copies digitally are es-
there are so many nonprofit examples of being sentially zero.4 The costs to distribute physi-
Made with Creative Commons. The content cal copies are still significant, but lower than
is the result of a labor of love or a tool to drive they have been historically. And it is now much
social change, and money is like gas in the car, easier to print and distribute physical copies
something that you need to keep going but on-demand, which also reduces costs. De-
not an end in itself. Being Made with Creative pending on the endeavor, there can be a whole
Commons is a different vision of a business or host of other possible expenses like marketing
livelihood, where profit is not paramount, and and promotion, and even expenses associated
producing social good and human connection with the various ways money is being made,
are integral to success. like touring or custom training.
Made With Creative Commons 21
It’s important to recognize that the biggest predictable ways. The first is how it helps solve
impact of technology on creative endeavors “problem zero.”
is that creators can now foot the costs of cre-
ation and distribution themselves. People now Problem Zero: Getting Discovered
often have a direct route to their potential pub- Once you create or collect your content, the
lic without necessarily needing intermediaries next step is finding users, customers, fans—in
like record labels and book publishers. Doc- other words, your people. As Amanda Palmer
torow wrote, “If you’re a creator who never got wrote, “It has to start with the art. The songs
the time of day from one of the great imperial had to touch people initially, and mean some-
powers, this is your time. Where once you had thing, for anything to work at all.”6 There isn’t
no means of reaching an audience without the any magic to finding your people, and there is
assistance of the industry-dominating mega- certainly no formula. Your work has to connect
companies, now you have hundreds of ways to with people and offer them some artistic and/
do it without them.”5 Previously, distribution or utilitarian value. In some ways, this is easier
of creative work involved the costs associated than ever. Online we are not limited by shelf
with sustaining a monolithic entity, now cre- space, so there is room for every obscure in-
ators can do the work themselves. That means terest, taste, and need imaginable. This is what
the financial needs of creative endeavors can Chris Anderson dubbed the Long Tail, where
be a lot more modest. consumption becomes less about mainstream
Whether for an individual creator or a larg- mass “hits” and more about micromarkets for
er endeavor, it usually isn’t enough to break every particular niche. As Anderson wrote,
even if you want to make what you’re doing a “We are all different, with different wants and
livelihood. You need to build in some support needs, and the Internet now has a place for all
for the general operation. This extra bit looks of them in the way that physical markets did
different for everyone, but importantly, in not.” 7 We are no longer limited to what appeals
nearly all cases for those Made with Creative to the masses.
Commons, the definition of “enough money” While finding “your people” online is theo-
looks a lot different than it does in the world retically easier than in the analog world, as a
of venture capital and stock options. It is more practical matter it can still be difficult to ac-
about sustainability and less about unlimited tually get noticed. The Internet is a firehose
growth and profit. SparkFun founder Nathan of content, one that only grows larger by the
Seidle told us, “Business model is a really gran- minute. As a content creator, not only are you
diose word for it. It is really just about keeping competing for attention against more content
the operation going day to day.” creators than ever before, you are competing
against creativity generated outside the mar-
ket as well.8 Anderson wrote, “The greatest
change of the past decade has been the shift
This book is a testament to the notion that it in time people spend consuming amateur con-
is possible to make money while using CC li- tent instead of professional content.” 9 To top
censes and CC-licensed content, but we are it all off, you have to compete against the rest
still very much at an experimental stage. The of their lives, too—“friends, family, music play-
creators, organizations, and businesses we lists, soccer games, and nights on the town.”10
profile in this book are blazing the trail and Somehow, some way, you have to get noticed
adapting in real time as they pursue this new by the right people.
way of operating. When you come to the Internet armed
There are, however, plenty of ways in which with an all-rights-reserved mentality from the
CC licensing can be good for business in fairly start, you are often restricting access to your
work before there is even any demand for it. In
22 Made With Creative Commons
many cases, requiring payment for your work has no impact on anyone else’s ability to make
is part of the traditional copyright system. use of it.
Even a tiny cost has a big effect on demand. If you take some amount of copying and
It’s called the penny gap—the large difference sharing your work as a given, you can invest
in demand between something that is avail- your time and resources elsewhere, rather
able at the price of one cent versus the price of than wasting them on playing a cat and mouse
zero.11 That doesn’t mean it is wrong to charge game with people who want to copy and share
money for your content. It simply means you your work. Lizzy Jongma from the Rijksmu-
need to recognize the effect that doing so will seum said, “We could spend a lot of money
have on demand. The same principle applies trying to protect works, but people are going
to restricting access to copy the work. If your to do it anyway. And they will use bad-quali-
problem is how to get discovered and find ty versions.” Instead, they started releasing
“your people,” prohibiting people from copy- high-resolution digital copies of their collec-
ing your work and sharing it with others is tion into the public domain and making them
counterproductive. available for free on their website. For them,
Of course, it’s not that being discovered by sharing was a form of quality control over the
people who like your work will make you rich— copies that were inevitably being shared on-
far from it. But as Cory Doctorow says, “Recog- line. Doing this meant forgoing the revenue
nition is one of many necessary preconditions they previously got from selling digital images.
for artistic success.”12 But Lizzy says that was a small price to pay for
Choosing not to spend time and energy re- all of the opportunities that sharing unlocked
stricting access to your work and policing in- for them.
fringement also builds goodwill. Lumen Learn- Being Made with Creative Commons
ing, a for-profit company that publishes online means you stop thinking about ways to arti-
educational materials, made an early decision ficially make your content scarce, and instead
not to prevent students from accessing their leverage it as the potentially abundant re-
content, even in the form of a tiny paywall, be- source it is.14 When you see information abun-
cause it would negatively impact student suc- dance as a feature, not a bug, you start think-
cess in a way that would undermine the social ing about the ways to use the idling capacity of
mission behind what they do. They believe this your content to your advantage. As my friend
decision has generated an immense amount and colleague Eric Steuer once said, “Using CC
of goodwill within the community. licenses shows you get the Internet.”
It is not just that restricting access to your Cory Doctorow says it costs him nothing
work may undermine your social mission. It when other people make copies of his work,
also may alienate the people who most value and it opens the possibility that he might get
your creative work. If people like your work, something in return.15 Similarly, the makers of
their natural instinct will be to share it with the Arduino boards knew it was impossible to
others. But as David Bollier wrote, “Our natu- stop people from copying their hardware, so
ral human impulses to imitate and share—the they decided not to even try and instead look
essence of culture—have been criminalized.”13 for the benefits of being open. For them, the
The fact that copying can carry criminal result is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of
penalties undoubtedly deters copying it, but hardware in the world, with a thriving online
copying with the click of a button is too easy community of tinkerers and innovators that
and convenient to ever fully stop it. Try as the have done things with their work they never
copyright industry might to persuade us other- could have done otherwise.
wise, copying a copyrighted work just doesn’t There are all kinds of way to leverage the
feel like stealing a loaf of bread. And, of course, power of sharing and remix to your benefit.
that’s because it isn’t. Sharing a creative work Here are a few.
Made With Creative Commons 23
Use CC to grow a larger audience Use CC to get attribution and name
Putting a Creative Commons license on your recognition
content won’t make it automatically go viral, Every Creative Commons license requires that
but eliminating legal barriers to copying the credit be given to the author, and that reus-
work certainly can’t hurt the chances that your ers supply a link back to the original source
work will be shared. The CC license symbolizes of the material. CC0, not a license but a tool
that sharing is welcome. It can act as a little tap used to put work in the public domain, does
on the shoulder to those who come across the not make attribution a legal requirement, but
work—a nudge to copy the work if they have many communities still give credit as a matter
any inkling of doing so. All things being equal, of best practices and social norms. In fact, it
if one piece of content has a sign that says is social norms, rather than the threat of legal
Share and the other says Don’t Share (which enforcement, that most often motivate peo-
is what “©” means), which do you think people ple to provide attribution and otherwise com-
are more likely to share? ply with the CC license terms anyway. This is
The Conversation is an online news site with the mark of any well-functioning community,
in-depth articles written by academics who are within both the marketplace and the society at
experts on particular topics. All of the articles large.19 CC licenses reflect a set of wishes on
are CC-licensed, and they are copied and re- the part of creators, and in the vast majority
shared on other sites by design. This proliferat- of circumstances, people are naturally inclined
ing effect, which they track, is a central part of to follow those wishes. This is particularly the
the value to their academic authors who want case for something as straightforward and
to reach as many readers as possible. consistent with basic notions of fairness as
The idea that more eyeballs equates with providing credit.
more success is a form of the max strategy, The fact that the name of the creator fol-
adopted by Google and other technology com- lows a CC-licensed work makes the licenses an
panies. According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, the important means to develop a reputation or, in
idea is simple: “Take whatever it is you are do- corporate speak, a brand. The drive to associ-
ing and do it at the max in terms of distribu- ate your name with your work is not just based
tion. The other way of saying this is that since on commercial motivations, it is fundamental
marginal cost of distribution is free, you might to authorship. Knowledge Unlatched is a non-
as well put things everywhere.”16 This strate- profit that helps to subsidize the print produc-
gy is what often motivates companies to make tion of CC-licensed academic texts by pooling
their products and services free (i.e., no cost), contributions from libraries around the United
but the same logic applies to making content States. The CEO, Frances Pinter, says that the
freely shareable. Because CC-licensed content Creative Commons license on the works has
is free (as in cost) and can be freely copied, CC a huge value to authors because reputation is
licensing makes it even more accessible and the most important currency for academics.
likely to spread. Sharing with CC is a way of having the most
If you are successful in reaching more people see and cite your work.
users, readers, listeners, or other consumers Attribution can be about more than just
of your work, you can start to benefit from the receiving credit. It can also be about estab-
bandwagon effect. The simple fact that there lishing provenance. People naturally want to
are other people consuming or following your know where content came from—the source
work spurs others to want to do the same.17 of a work is sometimes just as interesting as
This is, in part, because we simply have a ten- the work itself. Opendesk is a platform for fur-
dency to engage in herd behavior, but it is also niture designers to share their designs. Con-
because a large following is at least a partial sumers who like those designs can then get
indicator of quality or usefulness.18 matched with local makers who turn the de-
24 Made With Creative Commons
signs into real-life furniture. The fact that I, sit- In some cases, endeavors that are Made
ting in the middle of the United States, can pick with Creative Commons do not even need
out a design created by a designer in Tokyo dedicated marketing teams or marketing bud-
and then use a maker within my own commu- gets. Cards Against Humanity is a CC-licensed
nity to transform the design into something card game available as a free download. And
tangible is part of the power of their platform. because of this (thanks to the CC license on
The provenance of the design is a special part the game), the creators say it is one of the
of the product. best-marketed games in the world, and they
Knowing the source of a work is also critical have never spent a dime on marketing. The
to ensuring its credibility. Just as a trademark textbook publisher OpenStax has also avoid-
is designed to give consumers a way to identify ed hiring a marketing team. Their products are
the source and quality of a particular good and free, or cheaper to buy in the case of physical
service, knowing the author of a work gives the copies, which makes them much more attrac-
public a way to assess its credibility. In a time tive to students who then demand them from
when online discourse is plagued with misin- their universities. They also partner with ser-
formation, being a trusted information source vice providers who build atop the CC-licensed
is more valuable than ever. content and, in turn, spend money and re-
sources marketing those services (and by ex-
Use CC-licensed content as a marketing tension, the OpenStax textbooks).
tool
As we will cover in more detail later, many en- Use CC to enable hands-on engagement
deavors that are Made with Creative Com- with your work
mons make money by providing a product The great promise of Creative Commons li-
or service other than the CC-licensed work. censing is that it signifies an embrace of remix
Sometimes that other product or service is culture. Indeed, this is the great promise of
completely unrelated to the CC content. Other digital technology. The Internet opened up a
times it’s a physical copy or live performance whole new world of possibilities for public par-
of the CC content. In all cases, the CC content ticipation in creative work.
can attract people to your other product or Four of the six CC licenses enable reusers to
service. take apart, build upon, or otherwise adapt the
Knowledge Unlatched’s Pinter told us she work. Depending on the context, adaptation
has seen time and again how offering CC-li- can mean wildly different things—translating,
censed content—that is, digitally for free—ac- updating, localizing, improving, transforming.
tually increases sales of the printed goods be- It enables a work to be customized for partic-
cause it functions as a marketing tool. We see ular needs, uses, people, and communities,
this phenomenon regularly with famous art- which is another distinct value to offer the
work. The Mona Lisa is likely the most recog- public.21 Adaptation is more game changing in
nizable painting on the planet. Its ubiquity some contexts than others. With educational
has the effect of catalyzing interest in seeing materials, the ability to customize and update
the painting in person, and in owning physical the content is critically important for its use-
goods with the image. Abundant copies of the fulness. For photography, the ability to adapt a
content often entice more demand, not blunt photo is less important.
it. Another example came with the advent of This is a way to counteract a potential
the radio. Although the music industry did not downside of the abundance of free and open
see it coming (and fought it!), free music on the content described above. As Anderson wrote
radio functioned as advertising for the paid in Free, “People often don’t care as much about
version people bought in music stores.20 Free things they don’t pay for, and as a result they
can be a form of promotion. don’t think as much about how they consume
Made With Creative Commons 25
them.”22 If even the tiny act of volition of pay- philanthropic institutions, governments, or
ing one penny for something changes our concerned individuals, provide money to the
perception of that thing, then surely the act organization out of a sense of pure altruism.
of remixing it enhances our perception expo- This is the way traditional nonprofit funding
nentially.23 We know that people will pay more operates.28 But in many cases, the revenue
for products they had a part in creating.24 And streams used by endeavors that are Made
we know that creating something, no matter with Creative Commons are directly tied to
what quality, brings with it a type of creative the value they generate, where the recipient
satisfaction that can never be replaced by con- is paying for the value they receive like any
suming something created by someone else.25 standard market transaction. In still other
Actively engaging with the content helps us cases, rather than the quid pro quo exchange
avoid the type of aimless consumption that of money for value that typically drives market
anyone who has absentmindedly scrolled transactions, the recipient gives money out of
through their social-media feeds for an hour a sense of reciprocity.
knows all too well. In his book, Cognitive Sur- Most who are Made with Creative Com-
plus, Clay Shirky says, “To participate is to act mons use a variety of methods to bring in rev-
as if your presence matters, as if, when you see enue, some market-based and some not. One
something or hear something, your response common strategy is using grant funding for
is part of the event.”26 Opening the door to content creation when research-and-develop-
your content can get people more deeply tied ment costs are particularly high, and then find-
to your work. ing a different revenue stream (or streams) for
ongoing expenses. As Shirky wrote, “The trick
Use CC to differentiate yourself is in knowing when markets are an optimal
Operating under a traditional copyright regime way of organizing interactions and when they
usually means operating under the rules of are not.”29
establishment players in the media. Business Our case studies explore in more detail the
strategies that are embedded in the tradition- various revenue-generating mechanisms used
al copyright system, like using digital rights by the creators, organizations, and businesses
management (DRM) and signing exclusivity we interviewed. There is nuance hidden within
contracts, can tie the hands of creators, often the specific ways each of them makes money,
at the expense of the creator’s best interest.27 so it is a bit dangerous to generalize too much
Being Made with Creative Commons means about what we learned. Nonetheless, zooming
you can function without those barriers and, out and viewing things from a higher level of
in many cases, use the increased openness as abstraction can be instructive.
a competitive advantage. David Harris from
OpenStax said they specifically pursue strate- Market-based revenue streams
gies they know that traditional publishers can- In the market, the central question when de-
not. “Don’t go into a market and play by the in- termining how to bring in revenue is what val-
cumbent rules,” David said. “Change the rules ue people are willing to pay for.30 By definition,
of engagement.” if you are Made with Creative Commons, the
content you provide is available for free and
Making Money not a market commodity. Like the ubiquitous
Like any moneymaking endeavor, those that freemium business model, any possible mar-
are Made with Creative Commons have to ket transaction with a consumer of your con-
generate some type of value for their audi- tent has to be based on some added value you
ence or customers. Sometimes that value is provide.31
subsidized by funders who are not actually In many ways, this is the way of the future
beneficiaries of that value. Funders, whether for all content-driven endeavors. In the market,
26 Made With Creative Commons
value lives in things that are scarce. Because as a marketing tool for the paid product or
the Internet makes a universe of content avail- service.
able to all of us for free, it is difficult to get peo- Here are the most common high-level
ple to pay for content online. The struggling categories.
newspaper industry is a testament to this fact.
This is compounded by the fact that at least Providing a custom service to con-
MARKET-BASED
some amount of copying is probably inevita- sumers of your work
ble. That means you may end up competing In this age of information abundance, we
with free versions of your own content, wheth- don’t lack for content. The trick is find-
er you condone it or not.32 If people can easi- ing content that matches our needs and
ly find your content for free, getting people to wants, so customized services are par-
buy it will be difficult, particularly in a context ticularly valuable. As Anderson wrote,
where access to content is more important “Commodity information (everybody
than owning it. In Free, Anderson wrote, “Copy- gets the same version) wants to be free.
right protection schemes, whether coded into Customized information (you get some-
either law or software, are simply holding up a thing unique and meaningful to you)
price against the force of gravity.” wants to be expensive.”34 This can be
Of course, this doesn’t mean that con- anything from the artistic and cultural
tent-driven endeavors have no future in the consulting services provided by Ártica to
traditional marketplace. In Free, Anderson ex- the custom-song business of Jonathan
plains how when one product or service be- “Song-A-Day” Mann.
comes free, as information and content largely
have in the digital age, other things become Charging for the physical copy
MARKET-BASED
more valuable. “Every abundance creates a In his book about maker culture, An-
new scarcity,” he wrote. You just have to find derson characterizes this model as giv-
some way other than the content to provide ing away the bits and selling the atoms
value to your audience or customers. As An- (where bits refers to digital content and
derson says, “It’s easy to compete with Free: atoms refer to a physical object).35 This is
simply offer something better or at least dif- particularly successful in domains where
ferent from the free version.” 33 the digital version of the content isn’t as
In light of this reality, in some ways endeav- valuable as the analog version, like book
ors that are Made with Creative Commons publishing where a significant subset of
are at a level playing field with all content-based people still prefer reading something
endeavors in the digital age. In fact, they may they can hold in their hands. Or in do-
even have an advantage because they can use mains where the content isn’t useful
the abundance of content to derive revenue until it is in physical form, like furniture
from something scarce. They can also benefit designs. In those situations, a significant
from the goodwill that stems from the values portion of consumers will pay for the con-
behind being Made with Creative Commons. venience of having someone else put the
physical version together for them. Some
endeavors squeeze even more out of this
revenue stream by using a Creative Com-
For content creators and distributors, there mons license that only allows noncom-
are nearly infinite ways to provide value to the mercial uses, which means no one else
consumers of your work, above and beyond can sell physical copies of their work in
the value that lives within your free digital con- competition with them. This strategy of
tent. Often, the CC-licensed content functions reserving commercial rights can be par-
ticularly important for items like books,
Made With Creative Commons 27
where every printed copy of the same willing to pay for—there are other services you
work is likely to be the same quality, so it can provide as well.
is harder to differentiate one publishing
service from another. On the other hand, Charging advertisers or sponsors
MARKET-BASED
for items like furniture or electronics, the The traditional model of subsidizing free
provider of the physical goods can com- content is advertising. In this version of
pete with other providers of the same multi-sided platforms, advertisers pay
works based on quality, service, or other for the opportunity to reach the set of
traditional business principles. eyeballs the content creators provide in
the form of their audience.37 The Internet
Charging for the in-person version has made this model more difficult be-
MARKET-BASED
As anyone who has ever gone to a con- cause the number of potential channels
cert will tell you, experiencing creativity available to reach those eyeballs has be-
in person is a completely different expe- come essentially infinite.38 Nonetheless,
rience from consuming a digital copy on it remains a viable revenue stream for
your own. Far from acting as a substitute many content creators, including those
for face-to-face interaction, CC-licensed who are Made with Creative Commons.
content can actually create demand for Often, instead of paying to display adver-
the in-person version of experience. You tising, the advertiser pays to be an official
can see this effect when people go view sponsor of particular content or projects,
original art in person or pay to attend a or of the overall endeavor.
talk or training course.
Charging your content creators
MARKET-BASED
Selling merchandise Another type of multisided platform is
MARKET-BASED
In many cases, people who like your work where the content creators themselves
will pay for products demonstrating a pay to be featured on the platform. Ob-
connection to your work. As a child of viously, this revenue stream is only avail-
the 1980s, I can personally attest to the able to those who rely on work created,
power of a good concert T-shirt. This can at least in part, by others. The most well-
also be an important revenue stream for known version of this model is the “au-
museums and galleries. thor-processing charge” of open-access
journals like those published by the Pub-
lic Library of Science, but there are other
variations. The Conversation is primar-
Sometimes the way to find a market-based ily funded by a university-membership
revenue stream is by providing value to peo- model, where universities pay to have
ple other than those who consume your CC-li- their faculties participate as writers of
censed content. In these revenue streams, the the content on the Conversation website.
free content is being subsidized by an entirely
different category of people or businesses. Of- Charging a transaction fee
MARKET-BASED
ten, those people or businesses are paying to This is a version of a traditional business
access your main audience. The fact that the model based on brokering transactions
content is free increases the size of the audi- between parties.39 Curation is an import-
ence, which in turn makes the offer more valu- ant element of this model. Platforms like
able to the paying customers. This is a varia- the Noun Project add value by wading
tion of a traditional business model built on through CC-licensed content to curate
free called multi-sided platforms.36 Access to a high-quality set and then derive reve-
your audience isn’t the only thing people are nue when creators of that content make
28 Made With Creative Commons
transactions with customers. Other plat- building a relationship, and then eventually
forms make money when service pro- finding some money that flows back out of a
viders transact with their customers; for sense of reciprocity. While some look like tra-
example, Opendesk makes money every ditional nonprofit funding models, they aren’t
time someone on their site pays a mak- charity. The endeavor exchange value with
er to make furniture based on one of the people, just not necessarily synchronous-
designs on the platform. ly or in a way that requires that those values
be equal. As David Bollier wrote in Think Like
Providing a service to your creators a Commoner, “There is no self-serving calcula-
MARKET-BASED
As mentioned above, endeavors can tion of whether the value given and received is
make money by providing customized strictly equal.”
services to their users. Platforms can un- This should be a familiar dynamic—it is the
dertake a variation of this service model way you deal with your friends and family. We
directed at the creators that provide the give without regard for what and when we will
content they feature. The data platforms get back. David Bollier wrote, “Reciprocal social
Figure.NZ and Figshare both capitalize exchange lies at the heart of human identity,
on this model by providing paid tools to community and culture. It is a vital brain func-
help their users make the data they con- tion that helps the human species survive and
tribute to the platform more discover- evolve.”
able and reusable. What is rare is to incorporate this sort of rela-
tionship into an endeavor that also engages with
Licensing a trademark the market.40 We almost can’t help but think of
MARKET-BASED
Finally, some that are Made with Cre- relationships in the market as being centered on
ative Commons make money by sell- an even-steven exchange of value.41
ing use of their trademarks. Well known
brands that consumers associate with Memberships and individual
RECIPROCITY-BASED
quality, credibility, or even an ethos can donations
license that trademark to companies that While memberships and donations are
want to take advantage of that goodwill. traditional nonprofit funding models, in
By definition, trademarks are scarce be- the Made with Creative Commons con-
cause they represent a particular source text, they are directly tied to the recipro-
of a good or service. Charging for the cal relationship that is cultivated with the
ability to use that trademark is a way of beneficiaries of their work. The bigger
deriving revenue from something scarce the pool of those receiving value from
while taking advantage of the abundance the content, the more likely this strategy
of CC content. will work, given that only a small percent-
age of people are likely to contribute.
Reciprocity-based revenue streams Since using CC licenses can grease the
Even if we set aside grant funding, we found wheels for content to reach more people,
that the traditional economic framework of this strategy can be more effective for
understanding the market failed to fully cap- endeavors that are Made with Creative
ture the ways the endeavors we analyzed were Commons. The greater the argument
making money. It was not simply about mone- that the content is a public good or that
tizing scarcity. the entire endeavor is furthering a social
Rather than devising a scheme to get peo- mission, the more likely this strategy is to
ple to pay money in exchange for some direct succeed.
value provided to them, many of the revenue
streams were more about providing value,
Made With Creative Commons 29
The pay-what-you-want model available to everyone for free. Libraries
RECIPROCITY-BASED
In the pay-what-you-want model, the with bigger budgets tend to give more
beneficiary of Creative Commons con- out of a sense of commitment to the li-
tent is invited to give—at any amount brary community and to the idea of open
they can and feel is appropriate, based access generally.
on the public and personal value they
feel is generated by the open content. Making Human Connections
Critically, these models are not touted as Regardless of how they made money, in our
“buying” something free. They are simi- interviews, we repeatedly heard language like
lar to a tip jar. People make financial con- “persuading people to buy” and “inviting peo-
tributions as an act of gratitude. These ple to pay.” We heard it even in connection
models capitalize on the fact that we with revenue streams that sit squarely within
are naturally inclined to give money for the market. Cory Doctorow told us, “I have to
things we value in the marketplace, even convince my readers that the right thing to do
in situations where we could find a way is to pay me.” The founders of the for-profit
to get it for free. company Lumen Learning showed us the let-
ter they send to those who opt not to pay for
Crowdfunding the services they provide in connection with
RECIPROCITY-BASED
Crowdfunding models are based on re- their CC-licensed educational content. It isn’t
couping the costs of creating and dis- a cease-and-desist letter; it’s an invitation to
tributing content before the content is pay because it’s the right thing to do. This sort
created. If the endeavor is Made with of behavior toward what could be considered
Creative Commons, anyone who wants nonpaying customers is largely unheard of in
the work in question could simply wait the traditional marketplace. But it seems to be
until it’s created and then access it for part of the fabric of being Made with Creative
free. That means, for this model to work, Commons.
people have to care about more than Nearly every endeavor we profiled relied, at
just receiving the work. They have to least in part, on people being invested in what
want you to succeed. Amanda Palmer they do. The closer the Creative Commons
credits the success of her crowdfunding content is to being “the product,” the more
on Kickstarter and Patreon to the years pronounced this dynamic has to be. Rather
she spent building her community and than simply selling a product or service, they
creating a connection with her fans. She are making ideological, personal, and creative
wrote in The Art of Asking, “Good art is connections with the people who value what
made, good art is shared, help is offered, they do.
ears are bent, emotions are exchanged, It took me a very long time to see how this
the compost of real, deep connection is avoidance of thinking about what they do in
sprayed all over the fields. Then one day, pure market terms was deeply tied to being
the artist steps up and asks for some- Made with Creative Commons.
thing. And if the ground has been fertil- I came to the research with preconceived
ized enough, the audience says, without notions about what Creative Commons is and
hesitation: of course.” what it means to be Made with Creative Com-
Other types of crowdfunding rely on mons. It turned out I was wrong on so many
a sense of responsibility that a partic- counts.
ular community may feel. Knowledge Obviously, being Made with Creative Com-
Unlatched pools funds from major U.S. mons means using Creative Commons licens-
libraries to subsidize CC-licensed aca- es. That much I knew. But in our interviews,
demic work that will be, by definition, people spoke of so much more than copyright
30 Made With Creative Commons
permissions when they explained how sharing pouring their lives out on the page. For oth-
fit into what they do. I was thinking about shar- ers, it means showing their creative process,
ing too narrowly, and as a result, I was missing giving a glimpse into how they do what they
vast swaths of the meaning packed within Cre- do. As writer Austin Kleon wrote, “Our work
ative Commons. Rather than parsing the spe- doesn’t speak for itself. Human beings want to
cific and narrow role of the copyright license in know where things came from, how they were
the equation, it is important not to disaggre- made, and who made them. The stories you
gate the rest of what comes with sharing. You tell about the work you do have a huge effect
have to widen the lens. on how people feel and what they understand
Being Made with Creative Commons is about your work, and how people feel and
not just about the simple act of licensing a what they understand about your work affects
copyrighted work under a set of standardized how they value it.”43
terms, but also about community, social good, A critical component to doing this effec-
contributing ideas, expressing a value system, tively is not worrying about being a “brand.”
working together. These components of shar- That means not being afraid to be vulnerable.
ing are hard to cultivate if you think about what Amanda Palmer says, “When you’re afraid of
you do in purely market terms. Decent social someone’s judgment, you can’t connect with
behavior isn’t as intuitive when we are doing them. You’re too preoccupied with the task of
something that involves monetary exchange. impressing them.” Not everyone is suited to
It takes a conscious effort to foster the context live life as an open book like Palmer, and that’s
for real sharing, based not strictly on imper- OK. There are a lot of ways to be human. The
sonal market exchange, but on connections trick is just avoiding pretense and the tempta-
with the people with whom you share—con- tion to artificially craft an image. People don’t
nections with you, with your work, with your just want the glossy version of you. They can’t
values, with each other. relate to it, at least not in a meaningful way.
The rest of this section will explore some of This advice is probably even more import-
the common strategies that creators, compa- ant for businesses and organizations because
nies, and organizations use to remind us that we instinctively conceive of them as nonhu-
there are humans behind every creative en- man (though in the United States, corporations
deavor. To remind us we have obligations to are people!). When corporations and organiza-
each other. To remind us what sharing really tions make the people behind them more ap-
looks like. parent, it reminds people that they are dealing
with something other than an anonymous cor-
Be human porate entity. In business-speak, this is about
Humans are social animals, which means we “humanizing your interactions” with the pub-
are naturally inclined to treat each other well.42 lic.44 But it can’t be a gimmick. You can’t fake
But the further removed we are from the per- being human.
son with whom we are interacting, the less car-
ing our behavior will be. While the Internet has Be open and accountable
democratized cultural production, increased Transparency helps people understand who
access to knowledge, and connected us in ex- you are and why you do what you do, but it also
traordinary ways, it can also make it easy for- inspires trust. Max Temkin of Cards Against
get we are dealing with another human. Humanity told us, “One of the most surpris-
To counteract the anonymous and imper- ing things you can do in capitalism is just be
sonal tendencies of how we operate online, honest with people.” That means sharing the
individual creators and corporations who use good and the bad. As Amanda Palmer wrote,
Creative Commons licenses work to demon- “You can fix almost anything by authentically
strate their humanity. For some, this means communicating.”45 It isn’t about trying to satis-
Made With Creative Commons 31
fy everyone or trying to sugarcoat mistakes or together better than neoclassical economics
bad news, but instead about explaining your would predict.”51 When we acknowledge that
rationale and then being prepared to defend it people are often motivated by something oth-
when people are critical.46 er than financial self-interest, we design our
Being accountable does not mean operating endeavors in ways that encourage and accen-
on consensus. According to James Surowiec- tuate our social instincts.
ki, consensus-driven groups tend to resort to Rather than trying to exert control over
lowest-common-denominator solutions and people’s behavior, this mode of operating re-
avoid the sort of candid exchange of ideas that quires a certain level of trust. We might not
cultivates healthy collaboration.47 Instead, it realize it, but our daily lives are already built
can be as simple as asking for input and then on trust. As Surowiecki wrote in The Wisdom of
giving context and explanation about deci- Crowds, “It’s impossible for a society to rely on
sions you make, even if soliciting feedback and law alone to make sure citizens act honestly
inviting discourse is time-consuming. If you and responsibly. And it’s impossible for any or-
don’t go through the effort to actually respond ganization to rely on contracts alone to make
to the input you receive, it can be worse than sure that its managers and workers live up to
not inviting input in the first place.48 But when their obligation.” Instead, we largely trust that
you get it right, it can guarantee the type of di- people—mostly strangers—will do what they
versity of thought that helps endeavors excel. are supposed to do.52 And most often, they do.
And it is another way to get people involved
and invested in what you do. Treat humans like, well, humans
For creators, treating people as humans
Design for the good actors means not treating them like fans. As Kleon
Traditional economics assumes people make says, “If you want fans, you have to be a fan
decisions based solely on their own econom- first.”53 Even if you happen to be one of the few
ic self-interest.49 Any relatively introspective to reach celebrity levels of fame, you are bet-
human knows this is a fiction—we are much ter off remembering that the people who fol-
more complicated beings with a whole range low your work are human, too. Cory Doctorow
of needs, emotions, and motivations. In fact, makes a point to answer every single email
we are hardwired to work together and ensure someone sends him. Amanda Palmer spends
fairness.50 Being Made with Creative Com- vast quantities of time going online to commu-
mons requires an assumption that people will nicate with her public, making a point to listen
largely act on those social motivations, motiva- just as much as she talks.54
tions that would be considered “irrational” in The same idea goes for businesses and or-
an economic sense. As Knowledge Unlatched’s ganizations. Rather than automating its cus-
Pinter told us, “It is best to ignore people who tomer service, the music platform Tribe of
try to scare you about free riding. That fear Noise makes a point to ensure its employees
is based on a very shallow view of what mo- have personal, one-on-one interaction with
tivates human behavior.” There will always be users.
people who will act in purely selfish ways, but When we treat people like humans, they typ-
endeavors that are Made with Creative Com- ically return the gift in kind. It’s called karma.
mons design for the good actors. But social relationships are fragile. It is all too
The assumption that people will largely do easy to destroy them if you make the mistake
the right thing can be a self-fulfilling prophe- of treating people as anonymous customers
cy. Shirky wrote in Cognitive Surplus, “Systems or free labor.55 Platforms that rely on content
that assume people will act in ways that create from contributors are especially at risk of cre-
public goods, and that give them opportunities ating an exploitative dynamic. It is important
and rewards for doing so, often let them work to find ways to acknowledge and pay back the
32 Made With Creative Commons
value that contributors generate. That does not or it may simply be a collection of like-minded
mean you can solve this problem by simply pay- people who get to know each other and ral-
ing contributors for their time or contributions. ly around common interests or beliefs.58 To a
As soon as we introduce money into a relation- certain extent, simply being Made with Cre-
ship—at least when it takes a form of paying ative Commons automatically brings with it
monetary value in exchange for other value— some element of community, by helping con-
it can dramatically change the dynamic.56 nect you to like-minded others who recognize
and are drawn to the values symbolized by
State your principles and stick to them using CC.
Being Made with Creative Commons makes To be sustainable, though, you have to work
a statement about who you are and what you to nurture community. People have to care—
do. The symbolism is powerful. Using Creative about you and each other. One critical piece to
Commons licenses demonstrates adherence this is fostering a sense of belonging. As Jono
to a particular belief system, which generates Bacon writes in The Art of Community, “If there
goodwill and connects like-minded people to is no belonging, there is no community.” For
your work. Sometimes people will be drawn to Amanda Palmer and her band, that meant cre-
endeavors that are Made with Creative Com- ating an accepting and inclusive environment
mons as a way of demonstrating their own where people felt a part of their “weird little
commitment to the Creative Commons value family.”59 For organizations like Red Hat, that
system, akin to a political statement. Other means connecting around common beliefs
times people will identify and feel connected or goals. As the CEO Jim Whitehurst wrote in
with an endeavor’s separate social mission. The Open Organization, “Tapping into passion
Often both. is especially important in building the kinds
The expression of your values doesn’t have of participative communities that drive open
to be implicit. In fact, many of the people we organizations.”60
interviewed talked about how important it is Communities that collaborate together
to state your guiding principles up front. Lu- take deliberate planning. Surowiecki wrote, “It
men Learning attributes a lot of their success takes a lot of work to put the group together.
to having been outspoken about the funda- It’s difficult to ensure that people are working
mental values that guide what they do. As a in the group’s interest and not in their own.
for-profit company, they think their expressed And when there’s a lack of trust between the
commitment to low-income students and members of the group (which isn’t surprising
open licensing has been critical to their cred- given that they don’t really know each other),
ibility in the OER (open educational resources) considerable energy is wasted trying to deter-
community in which they operate. mine each other’s bona fides.”61 Building true
When your end goal is not about making a community requires giving people within the
profit, people trust that you aren’t just trying community the power to create or influence
to extract value for your own gain. People no- the rules that govern the community.62 If the
tice when you have a sense of purpose that rules are created and imposed in a top-down
transcends your own self-interest.57 It attracts manner, people feel like they don’t have a
committed employees, motivates contribu- voice, which in turn leads to disengagement.
tors, and builds trust. Community takes work, but working togeth-
er, or even simply being connected around
Build a community common interests or values, is in many ways
Endeavors that are Made with Creative Com- what sharing is about.
mons thrive when community is built around
what they do. This may mean a community col-
laborating together to create something new,
Made With Creative Commons 33
Give more to the commons than you take globe. Chris Anderson calls it the Long Tail
Conventional wisdom in the marketplace dic- of talent.66 But to make collaboration work,
tates that people should try to extract as much the group has to be effective at what it is do-
money as possible from resources. This is es- ing, and the people within the group have to
sentially what defines so much of the so-called find satisfaction from being involved.67 This
sharing economy. In an article on the Harvard is easier to facilitate for some types of cre-
Business Review website called “The Sharing ative work than it is for others. Groups tied
Economy Isn’t about Sharing at All,” authors together online collaborate best when people
Giana Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi explained can work independently and asynchronously,
how the anonymous market-driven trans- and particularly for larger groups with loose
actions in most sharing-economy businesses ties, when contributors can make simple im-
are purely about monetizing access.63 As Lisa provements without a particularly heavy time
Gansky put it in her book The Mesh, the prima- commitment.68
ry strategy of the sharing economy is to sell the As the success of Wikipedia demonstrates,
same product multiple times, by selling access editing an online encyclopedia is exactly the
rather than ownership.64 That is not sharing. sort of activity that is perfect for massive co-
Sharing requires adding as much or more creation because small, incremental edits
value to the ecosystem than you take. You made by a diverse range of people acting
can’t simply treat open content as a free pool on their own are immensely valuable in the
of resources from which to extract value. Part aggregate. Those same sorts of small contri-
of giving back to the ecosystem is contributing butions would be less useful for many other
content back to the public under CC licenses. types of creative work, and people are in-
But it doesn’t have to just be about creating herently less motivated to contribute when
content; it can be about adding value in oth- it doesn’t appear that their efforts will make
er ways. The social blogging platform Medium much of a difference.69
provides value to its community by incentiv- It is easy to romanticize the opportunities
izing good behavior, and the result is an on- for global cocreation made possible by the In-
line space with remarkably high-quality user- ternet, and, indeed, the successful examples
generated content and limited trolling.65 of it are truly incredible and inspiring. But in a
Opendesk contributes to its community by wide range of circumstances—perhaps more
committing to help its designers make money, often than not—community cocreation is not
in part by actively curating and displaying their part of the equation, even within endeavors
work on its platform effectively. built on CC content. Shirky wrote, “Some-
In all cases, it is important to openly ac- times the value of professional work trumps
knowledge the amount of value you add ver- the value of amateur sharing or a feeling of
sus that which you draw on that was created belonging.70 The textbook publisher Open-
by others. Being transparent about this builds Stax, which distributes all of its material for
credibility and shows you are a contributing free under CC licensing, is an example of this
player in the commons. When your endeavor dynamic. Rather than tapping the communi-
is making money, that also means apportion- ty to help cocreate their college textbooks,
ing financial compensation in a way that re- they invest a significant amount of time and
flects the value contributed by others, provid- money to develop professional content. For
ing more to contributors when the value they individual creators, where the creative work is
add outweighs the value provided by you. the basis for what they do, community cocre-
ation is only rarely a part of the picture. Even
Involve people in what you do musician Amanda Palmer, who is famous for
Thanks to the Internet, we can tap into the her openness and involvement with her fans,
talents and expertise of people around the said, “The only department where I wasn’t
34 Made With Creative Commons
open to input was the writing, the music it-
self.” 71
While we tend to immediately think of co-
creation and remixing when we hear the word
collaboration, you can also involve others in
your creative process in more informal ways,
by sharing half-baked ideas and early drafts,
and interacting with the public to incubate
ideas and get feedback. So-called “making in
public” opens the door to letting people feel
more invested in your creative work.72 And it
shows a nonterritorial approach to ideas and
information. Stephen Covey (of The 7 Hab-
its of Highly Effective People fame) calls this
the abundance mentality—treating ideas like
something plentiful—and it can create an en-
vironment where collaboration flourishes.73
There is no one way to involve people in
what you do. They key is finding a way for peo-
ple to contribute on their terms, compelled by
their own motivations.74 What that looks like
varies wildly depending on the project. Not
every endeavor that is Made with Creative
Commons can be Wikipedia, but every en-
deavor can find ways to invite the public into
what they do. The goal for any form of collab-
oration is to move away from thinking of con-
sumers as passive recipients of your content
and transition them into active participants.75
Made With Creative Commons 35
Notes 14 Anderson, Free, 86.
1 Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Busi-
ness Model Generation (Hoboken, NJ: John 15 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be
Wiley and Sons, 2010), 14. A preview of Free, 144.
the book is available at strategyzer.com
/books/business-model-generation. 16 Anderson, Free, 123.
2 Cory Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want 17 Ibid., 132.
to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age (San
Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s, 2014) 68. 18 Ibid., 70.
3 Ibid., 55. 19 James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds
(New York: Anchor Books, 2005), 124.
4 Chris Anderson, Free: How Today’s Smart- Surowiecki says, “The measure of suc-
est Businesses Profit by Giving Something cess of laws and contracts is how rarely
for Nothing, reprint with new preface they are invoked.”
(New York: Hyperion, 2010), 224.
20 Anderson, Free, 44.
5 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be
Free, 44. 21 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model
Generation, 23.
6 Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking: Or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let 22 Anderson, Free, 67.
People Help (New York: Grand Central,
2014), 121. 23 Ibid., 58.
7 Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Indus- 24 Anderson, Makers, 71.
trial Revolution (New York: Signal, 2012),
64. 25 Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: How Tech-
nology Makes Consumers into Collabora-
8 David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A tors (London: Penguin Books, 2010), 78.
Short Introduction to the Life of the Com-
mons (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 26 Ibid., 21.
2014), 70.
27 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be
9 Anderson, Makers, 66. Free, 43.
10 Bryan Kramer, Shareology: How Sharing Is 28 William Landes Foster, Peter Kim, and
Powering the Human Economy (New York: Barbara Christiansen, “Ten Nonprofit
Morgan James, 2016), 10. Funding Models,” Stanford Social Innova-
tion Review, Spring 2009, ssir.org/articles
11 Anderson, Free, 62. /entry/ten_nonprofit_funding_models.
12 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be 29 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 111.
Free, 38.
30 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model
13 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 68. Generation, 30.
36 Made With Creative Commons
31 Jim Whitehurst, The Open Organization: 50 Ibid., 31.
Igniting Passion and Performance (Boston:
Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), 51 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 112.
202.
52 Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, 124.
32 Anderson, Free, 71.
53 Kleon, Show Your Work, 127.
33 Ibid., 231.
54 Palmer, Art of Asking, 121.
34 Ibid., 97.
55 Ariely, Predictably Irrational, 87.
35 Anderson, Makers, 107.
56 Ibid., 105.
36 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model
Generation, 89. 57 Ibid., 36.
37 Ibid., 92. 58 Jono Bacon, The Art of Community, 2nd
ed. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media,
38 Anderson, Free, 142. 2012), 36.
39 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model 59 Palmer, Art of Asking, 98.
Generation, 32.
60 Whitehurst, Open Organization, 34.
40 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 150.
61 Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, 200.
41 Ibid., 134.
62 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 29.
42 Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hid-
den Forces That Shape Our Decisions, rev. 63 Giana Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi, “The
ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), Sharing Economy Isn’t about Sharing at
109. All,” Harvard Business Review (website),
January 28, 2015, hbr.org/2015/01
43 Austin Kleon, Show Your Work: 10 Ways to /the-sharing-economy-isnt-about
Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered -sharing-at-all.
(New York: Workman, 2014), 93.
64 Lisa Gansky, The Mesh: Why the Future
44 Kramer, Shareology, 76. of Business Is Sharing, reprint with new
epilogue (New York: Portfolio, 2012).
45 Palmer, Art of Asking, 252.
65 David Lee, “Inside Medium: An Attempt
46 Whitehurst, Open Organization, 145. to Bring Civility to the Internet,” BBC
News, March 3, 2016, www.bbc.com
47 Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, 203. /news/technology-35709680.
48 Whitehurst, Open Organization, 80. 66 Anderson, Makers, 148.
49 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 25. 67 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 164.
Made With Creative Commons 37
68 Whitehurst, foreword to Open
Organization.
69 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 144.
70 Ibid., 154.
71 Palmer, Art of Asking, 163.
72 Anderson, Makers, 173.
73 Tom Kelley and David Kelley, Creative
Confidence: Unleashing the Potential within
Us All (New York: Crown, 2013), 82.
74 Whitehurst, foreword to Open
Organization.
75 Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, What’s
Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative
Consumption (New York: Harper Busi-
ness, 2010), 188.
38 Made With Creative Commons
THE
CREATIVE
COMMONS
3
LICENSES
All of the Creative Commons licenses grant a licenses offered. Recommended for maximum
basic set of permissions. At a minimum, a CC- dissemination and use of licensed materials.
licensed work can be copied and shared in its
original form for noncommercial purposes so The Attribution-Share-
long as attribution is given to the creator. There Alike license (CC BY-
are six licenses in the CC license suite that SA) lets others remix,
build on that basic set of permissions, ranging tweak, and build upon your work, even for
from the most restrictive (allowing only those commercial purposes, as long as they cred-
basic permissions to share unmodified cop- it you and license their new creations under
ies for noncommercial purposes) to the most identical terms. This license is often compared
permissive (reusers can do anything they want to “copyleft” free and open source software li-
with the work, even for commercial purposes, censes. All new works based on yours will car-
as long as they give the creator credit). The li- ry the same license, so any derivatives will also
censes are built on copyright and do not cover allow commercial use.
other types of rights that creators might have
in their works, like patents or trademarks. The Attribution-NoDerivs
Here are the six licenses: license (CC BY-ND) al-
lows for redistribution,
The Attribution license commercial and noncommercial, as long as it
(CC BY) lets others dis- is passed along unchanged with credit to you.
tribute, remix, tweak,
and build upon your work, even commercial-
ly, as long as they credit you for the original
creation. This is the most accommodating of
Made With Creative Commons 39
The Attribution-Non- licenses coming up in four or so case studies,
Commercial license (CC including the public-domain tool CC0. Some of
BY-NC) lets others re- the organizations we profiled offer both digital
mix, tweak, and build upon your work noncom- content and software: by using open-source-
mercially. Although their new works must also software licenses for the software code and
acknowledge you, they don’t have to license Creative Commons licenses for digital content,
their derivative works on the same terms. they amplify their involvement with and com-
mitment to sharing.
The Attribution-Non- There is a popular misconception that the
Commercial-ShareAlike three NonCommercial licenses offered by CC
license (CC BY-NC-SA) are the only options for those who want to
lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your make money off their work. As we hope this
work noncommercially, as long as they credit book makes clear, there are many ways to
you and license their new creations under the make endeavors that are Made with Creative
same terms. Commons sustainable. Reserving commercial
rights is only one of those ways. It is certainly
The Attribution-Non- true that a license that allows others to make
Commercial-NoDerivs commercial use of your work (CC BY, CC BY-SA,
license (CC BY-NC-ND) is and CC BY-ND) forecloses some traditional rev-
the most restrictive of our six main licenses, enue streams. If you apply an Attribution (CC
only allowing others to download your works BY) license to your book, you can’t force a film
and share them with others as long as they company to pay you royalties if they turn your
credit you, but they can’t change them or use book into a feature-length film, or prevent an-
them commercially. other company from selling physical copies of
your work.
In addition to these six licenses, Creative Com- The decision to choose a NonCommercial
mons has two public-domain tools—one for and/or NoDerivs license comes down to how
creators and the other for those who manage much you need to retain control over the cre-
collections of existing works by authors whose ative work. The NonCommercial and NoDerivs
terms of copyright have expired: licenses are ways of reserving some significant
portion of the exclusive bundle of rights that
CC0 enables authors copyright grants to creators. In some cases,
and copyright owners reserving those rights is important to how you
to dedicate their works bring in revenue. In other cases, creators use a
to the worldwide public domain (“no rights re- NonCommercial or NoDerivs license because
served”). they can’t give up on the dream of hitting the
creative jackpot. The music platform Tribe of
The Creative Commons Noise told us the NonCommercial licenses
Public Domain Mark fa- were popular among their users because peo-
cilitates the labeling and ple still held out the dream of having a major
discovery of works that are already free of record label discover their work.
known copyright restrictions. Other times the decision to use a more re-
strictive license is due to a concern about the
In our case studies, some use just one Cre- integrity of the work. For example, the non-
ative Commons license, others use several. At- profit TeachAIDS uses a NoDerivs license for
tribution (found in thirteen case studies) and its educational materials because the medical
Attribution-ShareAlike (found in eight stud- subject matter is particularly important to get
ies) were the most common, with the other right.
40 Made With Creative Commons
There is no one right way. The NonCom-
mercial and NoDerivs restrictions reflect the
values and preferences of creators about how
their creative work should be reused, just as
the ShareAlike license reflects a different set
of values, one that is less about controlling ac-
cess to their own work and more about ensur-
ing that whatever gets created with their work
is available to all on the same terms. Since the
beginning of the commons, people have been
setting up structures that helped regulate the
way in which shared resources were used.
The CC licenses are an attempt to standardize
norms across all domains.
Note
For more about the licenses including ex-
amples and tips on sharing your work in the
digital commons, start with the Creative
Commons page called “Share Your Work” at
creativecommons.org/share-your-work/.
Made With Creative Commons 41
42 Made With Creative Commons
Part 2
THE
CASE STUDIES
Made With Creative Commons 43
44 Made With Creative Commons
The twenty-four case studies in this section
were chosen from hundreds of nominations
received from Kickstarter backers, Creative
Commons staff, and the global Creative Com-
mons community. We selected eighty poten-
tial candidates that represented a mix of in-
dustries, content types, revenue streams, and
parts of the world. Twelve of the case studies
were selected from that group based on votes
cast by Kickstarter backers, and the other
twelve were selected by us.
We did background research and conduct-
ed interviews for each case study, based on
the same set of basic questions about the
endeavor. The idea for each case study is to
tell the story about the endeavor and the role
sharing plays within it, largely the way in which
it was told to us by those we interviewed.
Made With Creative Commons 45
46 Made With Creative Commons
ARDUINO
Arduino is a for-profit open-source electronics Revenue model: charging for physical copies
platform and computer hardware and soft- (sales of boards, modules, shields, and kits),
ware company. Founded in 2005 in Italy. licensing a trademark (fees paid by those
who want to sell Arduino products using their
www.arduino.cc name)
Interview date: February 4, 2016
Interviewees: David Cuartielles and Tom Igoe, cofounders
Profile written by Paul Stacey
In 2005, at the Interaction Design Institute ing something online. You send a set of instruc-
Ivrea in northern Italy, teachers and students tions to the microcontroller on the board by
needed an easy way to use electronics and pro- using the Arduino programming language and
gramming to quickly prototype design ideas. As Arduino software (based on a piece of open-
musicians, artists, and designers, they needed source software called Processing, a program-
a platform that didn’t require engineering ex- ming tool used to make visual art).
pertise. A group of teachers and students, in- “The reasons for making Arduino open
cluding Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom source are complicated,” Tom says. Partly it
Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis, built was about supporting flexibility. The open-
a platform that combined different open tech- source nature of Arduino empowers users
nologies. They called it Arduino. The platform to modify it and create a lot of different vari-
integrated software, hardware, microcontrol- ations, adding on top of what the founders
lers, and electronics. All aspects of the platform build. David says this “ended up strengthen-
were openly licensed: hardware designs and ing the platform far beyond what we had even
documentation with the Attribution-Share- thought of building.”
Alike license (CC BY-SA), and software with the For Tom another factor was the impend-
GNU General Public License. ing closure of the Ivrea design school. He’d
Arduino boards are able to read inputs— seen other organizations close their doors
light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a and all their work and research just disappear.
Twitter message—and turn it into outputs— Open-sourcing ensured that Arduino would
activating a motor, turning on an LED, publish- outlive the Ivrea closure. Persistence is one
Made With Creative Commons 47
thing Tom really likes about open source. If vides a wiki called Playground (a wiki is where
key people leave, or a company shuts down, all users can edit and add pages, contributing
an open-source product lives on. In Tom’s to and benefiting from collective research).
view, “Open sourcing makes it easier to trust a People share code, circuit diagrams, tutorials,
product.” DIY instructions, and tips and tricks, and show
off their projects. In addition, there’s a multi-
language discussion forum where users can
get help using Arduino, discuss topics like ro-
With the school closing, David and some of the botics, and make suggestions for new Arduino
other Arduino founders started a consulting product designs. As of January 2017, 324,928
firm and multidisciplinary design studio they members had made 2,989,489 posts on
called Tinker, in London. Tinker designed prod- 379,044 topics. The worldwide community of
ucts and services that bridged the digital and makers has contributed an incredible amount
the physical, and they taught people how to of accessible knowledge helpful to novices and
use new technologies in creative ways. Rev- experts alike.
enue from Tinker was invested in sustaining Transitioning Arduino from a project to a
and enhancing Arduino. company was a big step. Other businesses
For Tom, part of Arduino’s success is be- who made boards were charging a lot of mon-
cause the founders made themselves the ey for them. Arduino wanted to make theirs
first customer of their product. They made available at a low price to people across a wide
products they themselves personally want- range of industries. As with any business, pric-
ed. It was a matter of “I need this thing,” not ing was key. They wanted prices that would get
“If we make this, we’ll make a lot of money.” lots of customers but were also high enough
Tom notes that being your own first customer to sustain the business.
makes you more confident and convincing at For a business, getting to the end of the year
selling your product. and not being in the red is a success. Arduino
may have an open-licensing strategy, but they
are still a business, and all the things needed to
successfully run one still apply. David says, “If
Arduino’s business model has evolved over you do those other things well, sharing things
time—and Tom says model is a grandiose term in an open-source way can only help you.”
for it. Originally, they just wanted to make a While openly licensing the designs, docu-
few boards and get them out into the world. mentation, and software ensures longevity,
They started out with two hundred boards, it does have risks. There’s a possibility that
sold them, and made a little profit. They used others will create knockoffs, clones, and cop-
that to make another thousand, which gener- ies. The CC BY-SA license means anyone can
ated enough revenue to make five thousand. produce copies of their boards, redesign them,
In the early days, they simply tried to generate and even sell boards that copy the design.
enough funding to keep the venture going day They don’t have to pay a license fee to Ardu-
to day. When they hit the ten thousand mark, ino or even ask permission. However, if they
they started to think about Arduino as a com- republish the design of the board, they have
pany. By then it was clear you can open-source to give attribution to Arduino. If they change
the design but still manufacture the physical the design, they must release the new design
product. As long as it’s a quality product and using the same Creative Commons license to
sold at a reasonable price, people will buy it. ensure that the new version is equally free and
Arduino now has a worldwide community open.
of makers—students, hobbyists, artists, pro- Tom and David say that a lot of people have
grammers, and professionals. Arduino pro- built companies off of Arduino, with dozens of
48 Made With Creative Commons
Arduino derivatives out there. But in contrast building of community; this focus is one of the
to closed business models that can wring mon- keys to their success. And being open lets you
ey out of the system over many years because build a real community. David says Arduino’s
there is no competition, Arduino founders community is a big strength and something
saw competition as keeping them honest, and that really does matter—in his words, “It’s
aimed for an environment of collaboration. A good business.” When they started, the Ardu-
benefit of open over closed is the many new ino team had almost entirely no idea how to
ideas and designs others have contributed build a community. They started by conduct-
back to the Arduino ecosystem, ideas and de- ing numerous workshops, working directly
signs that Arduino and the Arduino communi- with people using the platform to make sure
ty use and incorporate into new products. the hardware and software worked the way it
Over time, the range of Arduino products was meant to work and solved people’s prob-
has diversified, changing and adapting to new lems. The community grew organically from
needs and challenges. In addition to simple there.
entry level boards, new products have been
added ranging from enhanced boards that
provide advanced functionality and faster per-
formance, to boards for creating Internet of A key decision for Arduino was trademark-
Things applications, wearables, and 3-D print- ing the name. The founders needed a way to
ing. The full range of official Arduino products guarantee to people that they were buying a
includes boards, modules (a smaller form-fac- quality product from a company committed to
tor of classic boards), shields (elements that open-source values and knowledge sharing.
can be plugged onto a board to give it extra Trademarking the Arduino name and logo ex-
features), and kits.1 presses that guarantee and helps customers
easily identify their products, and the prod-
ucts sanctioned by them. If others want to sell
boards using the Arduino name and logo, they
THE OPEN-SOURCE NATURE OF have to pay a small fee to Arduino. This allows
Arduino to scale up manufacturing and dis-
ARDUINO EMPOWERS USERS tribution while at the same time ensuring the
Arduino brand isn’t hurt by low-quality copies.
TO MODIFY IT AND CREATE A Current official manufacturers are Smart
Projects in Italy, SparkFun in the United States,
LOT OF DIFFERENT VARIATIONS, and Dog Hunter in Taiwan/China. These are
the only manufacturers that are allowed to use
STRENGTHENING THE the Arduino logo on their boards. Trademark-
ing their brand provided the founders with a
PLATFORM FAR BEYOND WHAT way to protect Arduino, build it out further,
and fund software and tutorial development.
THE FOUNDERS THOUGHT OF The trademark-licensing fee for the brand be-
came Arduino’s revenue-generating model.
BUILDING. How far to open things up wasn’t always
something the founders perfectly agreed
on. David, who was always one to advocate
for opening things up more, had some fears
about protecting the Arduino name, think-
Arduino’s focus is on high-quality boards, ing people would be mad if they policed their
well-designed support materials, and the brand. There was some early backlash with
Made With Creative Commons 49
a project called Freeduino, but overall, trade- technology in many different ways. Technolo-
marking and branding has been a critical tool gy is always making more things possible but
for Arduino. doesn’t always focus on making it easy to use
David encourages people and business- and adapt. This is where Arduino steps in. Ar-
es to start by sharing everything as a default duino’s goal is “making things that help other
strategy, and then think about whether there people make things.”
is anything that really needs to be protected Arduino has been hugely successful in mak-
and why. There are lots of good reasons to ing technology and electronics reach a larger
not open up certain elements. This strategy audience. For Tom, Arduino has been about
of sharing everything is certainly the complete “the democratization of technology.” Tom sees
opposite of how today’s world operates, where Arduino’s open-source strategy as helping the
nothing is shared. Tom suggests a business world get over the idea that technology has to
formalize which elements are based on open be protected. Tom says, “Technology is a liter-
sharing and which are closed. An Arduino blog acy everyone should learn.”
post from 2013 entitled “Send In the Clones,” Ultimately, for Arduino, going open has
by one of the founders Massimo Banzi, does been good business—good for product devel-
a great job of explaining the full complexities opment, good for distribution, good for pric-
of how trademarking their brand has played ing, and good for manufacturing.
out, distinguishing between official boards
and those that are clones, derivatives, compat- Web links
ibles, and counterfeits.2 1 www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products
For David, an exciting aspect of Arduino 2 blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/10/send-in-the
is the way lots of people can use it to adapt -clones/
50 Made With Creative Commons
ÁRTICA
Ártica provides online courses and consulting www.articaonline.com
services focused on how to use digital tech-
nology to share knowledge and enable collab- Revenue model: charging for custom
oration in arts and culture. Founded in 2011 services
in Uruguay.
Interview date: March 9, 2016
Interviewees: Mariana Fossatti and Jorge Gemetto, cofounders
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
The story of Mariana Fossatti and Jorge Ge- Ártica feels like a uniquely twenty-first cen-
metto’s business, Ártica, is the ultimate ex- tury business. The small company has a global
ample of DIY. Not only are they successful online presence with no physical offices. Jorge
entrepreneurs, the niche in which their small and Mariana live in Uruguay, and the other
business operates is essentially one they built two full-time employees, who Jorge and Mar-
themselves. iana have never actually met in person, live in
Their dream jobs didn’t exist, so they creat- Spain. They started by creating a MOOC (mas-
ed them. sive open online course) about remix culture
In 2011, Mariana was a sociologist working and collaboration in the arts, which gave them
for an international organization to develop a direct way to reach an international audience,
research and online education about rural-de- attracting students from across Latin America
velopment issues. Jorge was a psychologist, and Spain. In other words, it is the classic Inter-
also working in online education. Both were net story of being able to directly tap into an
bloggers and heavy users of social media, and audience without relying upon gatekeepers or
both had a passion for arts and culture. They intermediaries.
decided to take their skills in digital technol- Ártica offers personalized education and
ogy and online learning and apply them to a consulting services, and helps clients imple-
topic area they loved. They launched Ártica, an ment projects. All of these services are cus-
online business that provides education and tomized. They call it an “artisan” process be-
consulting for people and institutions creating cause of the time and effort it takes to adapt
artistic and cultural projects on the Internet. their work for the particular needs of students
Made With Creative Commons 51
IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND students and clients. Everything they create—
online education, blog posts, videos—is pub-
CULTURAL BUSINESS, IT IS MORE lished under an Attribution-ShareAlike license
(CC BY-SA). “We use a ShareAlike license be-
IMPORTANT TO PAY ATTENTION cause we want to give the greatest freedom to
our students and readers, and we also want
TO PEOPLE AND PROCESS, RATHER that freedom to be viral,” Jorge said. For them,
giving others the right to reuse and remix their
THAN CONTENT OR SPECIFIC content is a fundamental value. “How can you
offer an online educational service without giv-
FORMATS OR MATERIALS. ing permission to download, make and keep
copies, or print the educational resources?”
Jorge said. “If we want to do the best for our
and clients. “Each student or client is paying students—those who trust in us to the point
for a specific solution to his or her problems that they are willing to pay online without face-
and questions,” Mariana said. Rather than sell to-face contact—we have to offer them a fair
access to their content, they provide it for free and ethical agreement.”
and charge for the personalized services. They also believe sharing their ideas and ex-
When they started, they offered a smaller pertise openly helps them build their reputa-
number of courses designed to attract large tion and visibility. People often share and cite
audiences. “Over the years, we realized that their work. A few years ago, a publisher even
online communities are more specific than we picked up one of their e-books and distribut-
thought,” Mariana said. Ártica now provides ed printed copies. Ártica views reuse of their
more options for classes and has lower enroll- work as a way to open up new opportunities
ment in each course. This means they can pro- for their business.
vide more attention to individual students and This belief that openness creates new op-
offer classes on more specialized topics. portunities reflects another belief—in ser-
Online courses are their biggest revenue endipity. When describing their process for
stream, but they also do more than a dozen creating content, they spoke of all of the spon-
consulting projects each year, ranging from taneous and organic ways they find inspira-
digitization to event planning to marketing tion. “Sometimes, the collaborative process
campaigns. Some are significant in scope, par- starts with a conversation between us, or
ticularly when they work with cultural institu- with friends from other projects,” Jorge said.
tions, and some are smaller projects commis- “That can be the first step for a new blog post
sioned by individual artists. or another simple piece of content, which can
Ártica also seeks out public and private evolve to a more complex product in the fu-
funding for specific projects. Sometimes, even ture, like a course or a book.”
if they are unsuccessful in subsidizing a proj- Rather than planning their work in advance,
ect like a new course or e-book, they will go they let their creative process be dynamic.
ahead because they believe in it. They take the “This doesn’t mean that we don’t need to work
stance that every new project leads them to hard in order to get good professional results,
something new, every new resource they cre- but the design process is more flexible,” Jorge
ate opens new doors. said. They share early and often, and they ad-
just based on what they learn, always explor-
ing and testing new ideas and ways of operat-
ing. In many ways, for them, the process is just
Ártica relies heavily on their free Creative as important as the final product.
Commons–licensed content to attract new
52 Made With Creative Commons
People and relationships are also just as im- Of course, Ártica also has to make enough
portant, sometimes more. “In the educational money to cover its expenses. Human resourc-
and cultural business, it is more important to es are, by far, their biggest expense. They tap
pay attention to people and process, rather a network of collaborators on a case-by-case
than content or specific formats or materials,” basis and hire contractors for specific projects.
Mariana said. “Materials and content are fluid. Whenever possible, they draw from artistic
The important thing is the relationships.” and cultural resources in the commons, and
Ártica believes in the power of the network. they rely on free software. Their operation is
They seek to make connections with people small, efficient, and sustainable, and because
and institutions across the globe so they can of that, it is a success.
learn from them and share their knowledge. “There are lots of people offering online
courses,” Jorge said. “But it is easy to differen-
tiate us. We have an approach that is very spe-
cific and personal.” Ártica’s model is rooted in
At the core of everything Ártica does is a set the personal at every level. For Mariana and
of values. “Good content is not enough,” Jorge Jorge, success means doing what brings them
said. “We also think that it is very important personal meaning and purpose, and doing it
to take a stand for some things in the cultural sustainably and collaboratively.
sector.” Mariana and Jorge are activists. They In their work with younger artists, Mariana
defend free culture (the movement promoting and Jorge try to emphasize that this model of
the freedom to modify and distribute creative success is just as valuable as the picture of
work) and work to demonstrate the intersec- success we get from the media. “If they seek
tion between free culture and other social-jus- only the traditional type of success, they will
tice movements. Their efforts to involve people get frustrated,” Mariana said. “We try to show
in their work and enable artists and cultural in- them another image of what it looks like.”
stitutions to better use technology are all tied
closely to their belief system. Ultimately, what
drives their work is a mission to democratize
art and culture.
Made With Creative Commons 53
54 Made With Creative Commons
BLENDER
INSTITUTE
The Blender Institute is an animation studio Revenue model: crowdfunding (subscrip-
that creates 3-D films using Blender software. tion-based), charging for physical copies,
Founded in 2006 in the Netherlands. selling merchandise
www.blender.org
Interview date: March 8, 2016
Interviewee: Francesco Siddi, production coordinator
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
For Ton Roosendaal, the creator of Blender because the technical team responds directly
software and its related entities, sharing is to the needs of the film production team, cre-
practical. Making their 3-D content creation ating tools and features that make their lives
software available under a free software li- easier. And, of course, each project involves a
cense has been integral to its development long, rewarding process for the creative and
and popularity. Using that software to make technical community working together.
movies that were licensed with Creative Com- Rather than just talking about the theoret-
mons pushed that development even further. ical benefits of sharing and free culture, Ton
Sharing enables people to participate and to is very much about doing and making free cul-
interact with and build upon the technology ture. Blender’s production coordinator Fran-
and content they create in a way that benefits cesco Siddi told us, “Ton believes if you don’t
Blender and its community in concrete ways. make content using your tools, then you’re not
Each open-movie project Blender runs pro- doing anything.”
duces a host of openly licensed outputs, not
just the final film itself but all of the source ma-
terial as well. The creative process also enhanc-
es the development of the Blender software
Made With Creative Commons 55
Blender’s history begins in the late 1990s, They turned to crowdfunding to subsidize
when Ton created the Blender software. Orig- the costs of the project. They had about twenty
inally, the software was an in-house resource people working full-time for six to ten months,
for his animation studio based in the Nether- so the costs were significant. Francesco said
lands. Investors became interested in the soft- that when their crowdfunding campaign suc-
ware, so he began marketing the software to ceeded, people were astounded. “The idea
the public, offering a free version in addition to that making money was possible by producing
a paid version. Sales were disappointing, and CC-licensed material was mind-blowing to peo-
his investors gave up on the endeavor in the ple,” he said. “They were like, ‘I have to see it to
early 2000s. He made a deal with investors—if believe it.’”
he could raise enough money, he could then The first film, which was released in 2006,
make the Blender software available under was an experiment. It was so successful that
the GNU General Public License. Ton decided to set up the Blender Institute,
This was long before Kickstarter and other an entity dedicated to hosting open-movie
online crowdfunding sites existed, but Ton ran projects. The Blender Institute’s next project
his own version of a crowdfunding campaign was an even bigger success. The film, Big Buck
and quickly raised the money he needed. The Bunny, went viral, and its animated characters
Blender software became freely available for were picked up by marketers.
anyone to use. Simply applying the General Francesco said that, over time, the Blender
Public License to the software, however, was Institute projects have gotten bigger and more
not enough to create a thriving community prominent. That means the filmmaking pro-
around it. Francesco told us, “Software of this cess has become more complex, combining
complexity relies on people and their vision of technical experts and artists who focus on sto-
how people work together. Ton is a fantastic rytelling. Francesco says the process is almost
community builder and manager, and he put on an industrial scale because of the number
a lot of work into fostering a community of de- of moving parts. This requires a lot of special-
velopers so that the project could live.” ized assistance, but the Blender Institute has
Like any successful free and open-source no problem finding the talent it needs to help
software project, Blender developed quickly on projects. “Blender hardly does any recruit-
because the community could make fixes and ing for film projects because the talent emerg-
improvements. “Software should be free and es naturally,” Francesco said. “So many people
open to hack,” Francesco said. “Otherwise, ev- want to work with us, and we can’t always hire
eryone is doing the same thing in the dark for them because of budget constraints.”
ten years.” Ton set up the Blender Foundation
to oversee and steward the software develop-
ment and maintenance.
After a few years, Ton began looking for new Blender has had a lot of success raising mon-
ways to push development of the software. He ey from its community over the years. In many
came up with the idea of creating CC-licensed ways, the pitch has gotten easier to make. Not
films using the Blender software. Ton put a only is crowdfunding simply more familiar to
call online for all interested and skilled artists. the public, but people know and trust Blender
Francesco said the idea was to get the best to deliver, and Ton has developed a reputation
artists available, put them in a building togeth- as an effective community leader and vision-
er with the best developers, and have them ary for their work. “There is a whole commu-
work together. They would not only produce nity who sees and understands the benefit of
high-quality openly licensed content, they these projects,” Francesco said.
would improve the Blender software in the While these benefits of each open-movie
process. project make a compelling pitch for crowd-
56 Made With Creative Commons
TON BELIEVES IF YOU DON’T nue streams, such as the Blender Store, where
people can purchase DVDs, T-shirts, and other
MAKE CONTENT USING YOUR Blender products.
TOOLS, THEN YOU’RE NOT DOING
ANYTHING. Ton has worked on projects relating to his
Blender software for nearly twenty years.
Throughout most of that time, he has been
funding campaigns, Francesco told us the committed to making the software and the
Blender Institute has found some limitations in content produced with the software free and
the standard crowdfunding model where you open. Selling a license has never been part of
propose a specific project and ask for funding. the business model.
“Once a project is over, everyone goes home,” Since 2006, he has been making films avail-
he said. “It is great fun, but then it ends. That able along with all of their source material. He
is a problem.” says he has hardly ever seen people stepping
To make their work more sustainable, they into Blender’s shoes and trying to make mon-
needed a way to receive ongoing support rath- ey off of their content. Ton believes this is be-
er than on a project-by-project basis. Their cause the true value of what they do is in the
solution is Blender Cloud, a subscription-style creative and production process. “Even when
crowdfunding model akin to the online crowd- you share everything, all your original sources,
funding platform, Patreon. For about ten euros it still takes a lot of talent, skills, time, and bud-
each month, subscribers get access to down- get to reproduce what you did,” Ton said.
load everything the Blender Institute produc- For Ton and Blender, it all comes back to
es—software, art, training, and more. All of doing.
the assets are available under an Attribution
license (CC BY) or placed in the public domain
(CC0), but they are initially made available only
to subscribers. Blender Cloud enables sub-
scribers to follow Blender’s movie projects as
they develop, sharing detailed information and
content used in the creative process. Blender
Cloud also has extensive training materials
and libraries of characters and other assets
used in various projects.
The continuous financial support provided
by Blender Cloud subsidizes five to six full-time
employees at the Blender Institute. Francesco
says their goal is to grow their subscriber base.
“This is our freedom,” he told us, “and for art-
ists, freedom is everything.”
Blender Cloud is the primary revenue
stream of the Blender Institute. The Blender
Foundation is funded primarily by donations,
and that money goes toward software develop-
ment and maintenance. The revenue streams
of the Institute and Foundation are deliberate-
ly kept separate. Blender also has other reve-
Made With Creative Commons 57
58 Made With Creative Commons
CARDS AGAINST
HUMANITY
Cards Against Humanity is a private, for-profit www.cardsagainsthumanity.com
company that makes a popular party game by
the same name. Founded in 2011 in the U.S. Revenue model: charging for physical copies
Interview date: February 3, 2016
Interviewee: Max Temkin, cofounder
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
If you ask cofounder Max Temkin, there is noth- Humanity is the number-one best-selling item
ing particularly interesting about the Cards out of all toys and games on Amazon. There
Against Humanity business model. “We make are official expansion packs available, and sev-
a product. We sell it for money. Then we spend eral official themed packs and international
less money than we make,” Max said. editions as well.
He is right. Cards Against Humanity is a But Cards Against Humanity is also avail-
simple party game, modeled after the game able for free. Anyone can download a digital
Apples to Apples. To play, one player asks a version of the game on the Cards Against Hu-
question or fill-in-the-blank statement from a manity website. More than one million people
black card, and the other players submit their have downloaded the game since the compa-
funniest white card in response. The catch is ny began tracking the numbers.
that all of the cards are filled with crude, grue- The game is available under an Attribu-
some, and otherwise awful things. For the tion-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC
right kind of people (“horrible people,” accord- BY-NC-SA). That means, in addition to copying
ing to Cards Against Humanity advertising), the game, anyone can create new versions of
this makes for a hilarious and fun game. the game as long as they make it available un-
The revenue model is simple. Physical cop- der the same noncommercial terms. The abili-
ies of the game are sold for a profit. And it ty to adapt the game is like an entire new game
works. At the time of this writing, Cards Against unto itself.
Made With Creative Commons 59
All together, these factors—the crass tone of have. In 2013, after deliberating, they decided
the game and company, the free download, the to have an Everything Costs $5 More sale.
openness to fans remixing the game—give “We sweated it out the night before Black
the game a massive cult following. Friday, wondering if our fans were going to
hate us for it,” he said. “But it made us laugh
so we went with it. People totally caught the
joke.”
Their success is not the result of a grand plan. This sort of bold transparency delights the
Instead, Cards Against Humanity was the last media, but more importantly, it engages their
in a long line of games and comedy projects fans. “One of the most surprising things you
that Max Temkin and his friends put togeth- can do in capitalism is just be honest with peo-
er for their own amusement. As Max tells the ple,” Max said. “It shocks people that there is
story, they made the game so they could play transparency about what you are doing.”
it themselves on New Year’s Eve because they Max also likened it to a grand improv scene.
were too nerdy to be invited to other parties. “If we do something a little subversive and un-
The game was a hit, so they decided to put it expected, the public wants to be a part of the
up online as a free PDF. People started ask- joke.” One year they did a Give Cards Against
ing if they could pay to have the game printed Humanity $5 event, where people literally paid
for them, and eventually they decided to run them five dollars for no reason. Their fans
a Kickstarter to fund the printing. They set wanted to make the joke funnier by making it
their Kickstarter goal at $4,000—and raised successful. They made $70,000 in a single day.
$15,000. The game was officially released in This remarkable trust they have in their
May 2011. customers is what inspired their decision
The game caught on quickly, and it has only to apply a Creative Commons license to the
grown more popular over time. Max says the game. Trusting your customers to reuse and
eight founders never had a meeting where remix your work requires a leap of faith. Cards
they decided to make it an ongoing business. Against Humanity obviously isn’t afraid of do-
“It kind of just happened,” he said. ing the unexpected, but there are lines even
But this tale of a “happy accident” belies they do not want to cross. Before applying the
marketing genius. Just like the game, the Cards license, Max said they worried that some fans
Against Humanity brand is irreverent and would adapt the game to include all of the jokes
memorable. It is hard to forget a company they intentionally never made because they
that calls the FAQ on their website “Your dumb crossed that line. “It happened, and the world
questions.” didn’t end,” Max said. “If that is the worst cost
Like most quality satire, however, there is of using CC, I’d pay that a hundred times over
more to the joke than vulgarity and shock val- because there are so many benefits.”
ue. The company’s marketing efforts around
Black Friday illustrate this particularly well. For
those outside the United States, Black Friday is
the term for the day after the Thanksgiving hol- Any successful product inspires its biggest
iday, the biggest shopping day of the year. It is fans to create remixes of it, but unsanctioned
an incredibly important day for Cards Against adaptations are more likely to fly under the ra-
Humanity, like it is for all U.S. retailers. Max dar. The Creative Commons license gives fans
said they struggled with what to do on Black of Cards Against Humanity the freedom to run
Friday because they didn’t want to support with the game and copy, adapt, and promote
what he called the “orgy of consumerism” the their creations openly. Today there are thou-
day has become, particularly since it follows a sands of fan expansions of the game.
day that is about being grateful for what you
60 Made With Creative Commons
Max said, “CC was a no-brainer for us because CC WAS A NO-BRAINER FOR
it gets the most people involved. Making the
game free and available under a CC license led US BECAUSE IT GETS THE MOST
to the unbelievable situation where we are one
of the best-marketed games in the world, and PEOPLE INVOLVED. MAKING
we have never spent a dime on marketing.”
Of course, there are limits to what the THE GAME FREE AND AVAILABLE
company allows its customers to do with the
game. They chose the Attribution-NonCom- UNDER A CC LICENSE LED TO
mercial-ShareAlike license because it restricts
people from using the game to make money. THE UNBELIEVABLE SITUATION
It also requires that adaptations of the game
be made available under the same licensing WHERE WE ARE ONE OF THE
terms if they are shared publicly. Cards Against
Humanity also polices its brand. “We feel like BEST-MARKETED GAMES IN THE
we’re the only ones who can use our brand
and our game and make money off of it,” Max WORLD, AND WE HAVE NEVER
said. About 99.9 percent of the time, they just
send an email to those making commercial use SPENT A DIME ON MARKETING.
of the game, and that is the end of it. There
have only been a handful of instances where
they had to get a lawyer involved.
For all of their success, the creators of Cards
Against Humanity are only partially motivated
Just as there is more than meets the eye to by money. Max says they have always been
the Cards Against Humanity business model, interested in the Walt Disney philosophy of
the same can be said of the game itself. To be financial success. “We don’t make jokes and
playable, every white card has to work syntac- games to make money—we make money so
tically with enough black cards. The eight cre- we can make more jokes and games,” he said.
ators invest an incredible amount of work into In fact, the company has given more than $4
creating new cards for the game. “We have million to various charities and causes. “Cards
daylong arguments about commas,” Max said. is not our life plan,” Max said. “We all have
“The slacker tone of the cards gives people the other interests and hobbies. We are passion-
impression that it is easy to write them, but it ate about other things going on in our lives. A
is actually a lot of work and quibbling.” lot of the activism we have done comes out of
That means cocreation with their fans real- us taking things from the rest of our lives and
ly doesn’t work. The company has a submis- channeling some of the excitement from the
sion mechanism on their website, and they get game into it.”
thousands of suggestions, but it is very rare Seeing money as fuel rather than the ulti-
that a submitted card is adopted. Instead, the mate goal is what has enabled them to em-
eight initial creators remain the primary au- brace Creative Commons licensing without
thors of expansion decks and other new prod- reservation. CC licensing ended up being a
ucts released by the company. Interestingly, savvy marketing move for the company, but
the creativity of their customer base is really nonetheless, giving up exclusive control of
only an asset to the company once their orig- your work necessarily means giving up some
inal work is created and published when peo- opportunities to extract more money from
ple make their own adaptations of the game. customers.
Made With Creative Commons 61
“It’s not right for everyone to release every-
thing under CC licensing,” Max said. “If your
only goal is to make a lot of money, then CC is
not best strategy. This kind of business model,
though, speaks to your values, and who you
are and why you’re making things.”
62 Made With Creative Commons
THE
CONVERSATION
The Conversation is an independent source of theconversation.com
news, sourced from the academic and re-
search community and delivered direct to the Revenue model: charging content creators
public over the Internet. Founded in 2011 in (universities pay membership fees to have
Australia. their faculties serve as writers), grant funding
Interview date: February 4, 2016
Interviewee: Andrew Jaspan, founder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
Andrew Jaspan spent years as an editor of ma- with depth and substance but was concerned
jor newspapers including the Observer in Lon- about the increasing focus on the sensational
don, the Sunday Herald in Glasgow, and the Age and sexy.
in Melbourne, Australia. He experienced first- While at the Age, he’d become friends with
hand the decline of newspapers, including the a vice-chancellor of a university in Melbourne
collapse of revenues, layoffs, and the constant who encouraged him to talk to smart people
pressure to reduce costs. After he left the Age across campus—an astrophysicist, a Nobel
in 2005, his concern for the future journalism laureate, earth scientists, economists . . . These
didn’t go away. Andrew made a commitment were the kind of smart people he wished were
to come up with an alternative model. more involved in informing the world about
what is going on and correcting the errors that
appear in media. However, they were reluctant
to engage with mass media. Often, journalists
Around the time he left his job as editor of the didn’t understand what they said, or unilater-
Melbourne Age, Andrew wondered where citi- ally chose what aspect of a story to tell, putting
zens would get news grounded in fact and ev- out a version that these people felt was wrong
idence rather than opinion or ideology. He be- or mischaracterized. Newspapers want to at-
lieved there was still an appetite for journalism tract a mass audience. Scholars want to com-
Made With Creative Commons 63
municate serious news, findings, and insights. access to independent, high-quality, informa-
It’s not a perfect match. tive journalism. The Conversation’s aim is for
Universities are massive repositories of people to have a better understanding of cur-
knowledge, research, wisdom, and expertise. rent affairs and complex issues—and hope-
But a lot of that stays behind a wall of their fully a better quality of public discourse. The
own making—there are the walled garden and Conversation sees itself as a source of trust-
ivory tower metaphors, and in more literal ed information dedicated to the public good.
terms, the paywall. Broadly speaking, universi- Their core mission is simple: to provide read-
ties are part of society but disconnected from ers with a reliable source of evidence-based
it. They are an enormous public resource but information.
not that good at presenting their expertise to Andrew worked hard to reinvent a meth-
the wider public. odology for creating reliable, credible content.
Andrew believed he could to help connect He introduced strict new working practices, a
academics back into the public arena, and charter, and codes of conduct.1 These include
maybe help society find solutions to big prob- fully disclosing who every author is (with their
lems. He thought about pairing professional relevant expertise); who is funding their re-
editors with university and research experts, search; and if there are any potential or real
working one-on-one to refine everything from conflicts of interest. Also important is where
story structure to headline, captions, and
quotes. The editors could help turn something
that is academic into something understand- ACCESS TO INFORMATION IS AN
able and readable. And this would be a key dif-
ference from traditional journalism—the sub- ISSUE OF EQUALITY—EVERYONE
ject matter expert would get a chance to check
the article and give final approval before it is SHOULD HAVE ACCESS, LIKE
published. Compare this with reporters just
picking and choosing the quotes and writing ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER.
whatever they want.
The people he spoke to liked this idea, and
Andrew embarked on raising money and sup- the content originates, and even though it
port with the help of the Commonwealth Sci- comes from the university and research com-
entific and Industrial Research Organisation munity, it still needs to be fully disclosed.
(CSIRO), the University of Melbourne, Monash The Conversation does not sit behind a pay-
University, the University of Technology Syd- wall. Andrew believes access to information is
ney, and the University of Western Australia. an issue of equality—everyone should have
These founding partners saw the value of an access, like access to clean water. The Conver-
independent information channel that would sation is committed to an open and free Inter-
also showcase the talent and knowledge of the net. Everyone should have free access to their
university and research sector. With their help, content, and be able to share it or republish it.
in 2011, the Conversation, was launched as Creative Commons help with these goals;
an independent news site in Australia. Every- articles are published with the Attribution-
thing published in the Conversation is openly NoDerivs license (CC BY-ND). They’re freely
licensed with Creative Commons. available for others to republish elsewhere
as long as attribution is given and the con-
tent is not edited. Over five years, more than
twenty-two thousand sites have republished
The Conversation is founded on the belief their content. The Conversation website gets
that underpinning a functioning democracy is about 2.9 million unique views per month,
64 Made With Creative Commons
but through republication they have thirty-five When professors from member universities
million readers. This couldn’t have been done write an article, there is some branding of the
without the Creative Commons license, and in university associated with the article. On the
Andrew’s view, Creative Commons is central to Conversation website, paying university mem-
everything the Conversation does. bers are listed as “members and funders.” Early
When readers come across the Conver- participants may be designated as “founding
sation, they seem to like what they find and members,” with seats on the editorial advisory
recommend it to their friends, peers, and board.
networks. Readership has grown primarily Academics are not paid for their contribu-
through word of mouth. While they don’t have tions, but they get free editing from a profes-
sales and marketing, they do promote their sional (four to five hours per piece, on average).
work through social media (including Twitter They also get access to a large audience. Ev-
and Facebook), and by being an accredited ery author and member university has access
supplier to Google News. to a special analytics dashboard where they
can check the reach of an article. The metrics
include what people are tweeting, the com-
ments, countries the readership represents,
It’s usual for the founders of any company to where the article is being republished, and the
ask themselves what kind of company it should number of readers per article.
be. It quickly became clear to the founders of The Conversation plans to expand the dash-
the Conversation that they wanted to create board to show not just reach but impact. This
a public good rather than make money off of tracks activities, behaviors, and events that
information. Most media companies are work- occurred as a result of publication, including
ing to aggregate as many eyeballs as possible things like a scholar being asked to go on a
and sell ads. The Conversation founders didn’t show to discuss their piece, give a talk at a con-
want this model. It takes no advertising and is ference, collaborate, submit a journal paper,
a not-for-profit venture. and consult a company on a topic.
There are now different editions of the These reach and impact metrics show the
Conversation for Africa, the United King- benefits of membership. With the Conversa-
dom, France, and the United States, in addi- tion, universities can engage with the public
tion to the one for Australia. All five editions and show why they’re of value.
have their own editorial mastheads, advisory With its tagline, “Academic Rigor, Journalis-
boards, and content. The Conversation’s glob- tic Flair,” the Conversation represents a new
al virtual newsroom has roughly ninety staff form of journalism that contributes to a more
working with thirty-five thousand academics informed citizenry and improved democracy
from over sixteen hundred universities around around the world. Its open business model
the world. The Conversation would like to be and use of Creative Commons show how it’s
working with university scholars from even possible to generate both a public good and
more parts of the world. operational revenue at the same time.
Additionally, each edition has its own set
of founding partners, strategic partners, and Web link
funders. They’ve received funding from foun- 1 theconversation.com/us/charter
dations, corporates, institutions, and individu-
al donations, but the Conversation is shifting
toward paid memberships by universities and
research institutions to sustain operations.
This would safeguard the current service and
help improve coverage and features.
Made With Creative Commons 65
66 Made With Creative Commons
CORY
DOCTOROW
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer, activ- Revenue model: charging for physical copies
ist, blogger, and journalist. Based in the U.S. (book sales), pay-what-you-want, selling trans-
lation rights to books
craphound.com and boingboing.net
Interview date: January 12, 2016
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
Cory Doctorow hates the term “business mod- writes about technology, politics, and intel-
el,” and he is adamant that he is not a brand. lectual property. He has also written several
“To me, branding is the idea that you can take nonfiction books, including the most recent
a thing that has certain qualities, remove the Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, about the
qualities, and go on selling it,” he said. “I’m ways in which creators can make a living in the
not out there trying to figure out how to be a Internet age.
brand. I’m doing this thing that animates me to Cory primarily makes money by selling phys-
work crazy insane hours because it’s the most ical books, but he also takes on paid speaking
important thing I know how to do.” gigs and is experimenting with pay-what-you-
Cory calls himself an entrepreneur. He likes want models for his work.
to say his success came from making stuff While Cory’s extensive body of fiction work
people happened to like and then getting out has a large following, he is just as well known
of the way of them sharing it. for his activism. He is an outspoken opponent
He is a science fiction writer, activist, blog- of restrictive copyright and digital-rights-man-
ger, and journalist. Beginning with his first nov- agement (DRM) technology used to lock up
el, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, in 2003, content because he thinks both undermine
his work has been published under a Creative creators and the public interest. He is current-
Commons license. Cory is coeditor of the pop- ly a special adviser at the Electronic Frontier
ular CC-licensed site Boing Boing, where he Foundation, where he is involved in a lawsuit
Made With Creative Commons 67
challenging the U.S. law that protects DRM. convince people they should pay him for his
Cory says his political work doesn’t directly work. “I started by not calling them thieves,”
make him money, but if he gave it up, he thinks he said.
he would lose credibility and, more important- Cory started using CC licenses soon after
ly, lose the drive that propels him to create. they were first created. At the time his first nov-
“My political work is a different expression el came out, he says the science fiction genre
of the same artistic-political urge,” he said. “I was overrun with people scanning and down-
have this suspicion that if I gave up the things loading books without permission. When he
that didn’t make me money, the genuineness and his publisher took a closer look at who was
would leach out of what I do, and the quality doing that sort of thing online, they realized it
that causes people to like what I do would be looked a lot like book promotion. “I knew there
gone.” was a relationship between having enthusias-
tic readers and having a successful career as
a writer,” he said. “At the time, it took eighty
hours to OCR a book, which is a big effort. I
Cory has been financially successful, but mon- decided to spare them the time and energy,
ey is not his primary motivation. At the start and give them the book for free in a format
of his book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, destined to spread.”
he stresses how important it is not to become Cory admits the stakes were pretty low for
an artist if your goal is to get rich. “Entering the him when he first adopted Creative Commons
arts because you want to get rich is like buying licenses. He only had to sell two thousand cop-
lottery tickets because you want to get rich,” ies of his book to break even. People often said
he wrote. “It might work, but it almost certain- he was only able to use CC licenses success-
ly won’t. Though, of course, someone always fully at that time because he was just starting
wins the lottery.” He acknowledges that he is out. Now they say he can only do it because he
one of the lucky few to “make it,” but he says is an established author.
he would be writing no matter what. “I am The bottom line, Cory says, is that no one
compelled to write,” he wrote. “Long before I has found a way to prevent people from copy-
wrote to keep myself fed and sheltered, I was ing the stuff they like. Rather than fighting the
writing to keep myself sane.” tide, Cory makes his work intrinsically share-
Just as money is not his primary motivation able. “Getting the hell out of the way for peo-
to create, money is not his primary motivation ple who want to share their love of you with
to share. For Cory, sharing his work with Cre- other people sounds obvious, but it’s remark-
ative Commons is a moral imperative. “It felt able how many people don’t do it,” he said.
morally right,” he said of his decision to adopt
Creative Commons licenses. “I felt like I wasn’t
contributing to the culture of surveillance and
censorship that has been created to try to stop Making his work available under Creative Com-
copying.” In other words, using CC licenses mons licenses enables him to view his biggest
symbolizes his worldview. fans as his ambassadors. “Being open to fan
He also feels like there is a solid commercial activity makes you part of the conversation
basis for licensing his work with Creative Com- about what fans do with your work and how
mons. While he acknowledges he hasn’t been they interact with it,” he said. Cory’s own web-
able to do a controlled experiment to compare site routinely highlights cool things his audi-
the commercial benefits of licensing with CC ence has done with his work. Unlike corpora-
against reserving all rights, he thinks he has tions like Disney that tend to have a hands-off
sold more books using a CC license than he relationship with their fan activity, he has a
would have without it. Cory says his goal is to symbiotic relationship with his audience. “En-
68 Made With Creative Commons
gaging with your audience can’t guarantee you “The more places your work can find itself,
success,” he said. “And Disney is an example the greater the likelihood that it will find one
of being able to remain aloof and still being of those would-be customers in some unsus-
the most successful company in the creative pected crack in the metaphorical pavement,”
industry in history. But I figure my likelihood of he wrote. “The copies that others make of my
being Disney is pretty slim, so I should take all work cost me nothing, and present the possi-
the help I can get.” bility that I’ll get something.”
His first book was published under the most Applying a CC license to his work increas-
restrictive Creative Commons license, Attribu- es the chances it will be shared more widely
tion-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND). around the Web. He avoids DRM—and open-
It allows only verbatim copying for noncom- ly opposes the practice—for similar reasons.
mercial purposes. His later work is published DRM has the effect of tying a work to a partic-
under the Attribution-NonCommercial-Share- ular platform. This digital lock, in turn, strips
Alike license (CC BY-NC-SA), which gives people the authors of control over their own work
the right to adapt his work for noncommercial and hands that control over to the platform.
purposes but only if they share it back un- He calls it Cory’s First Law: “Anytime someone
der the same license terms. Before releasing puts a lock on something that belongs to you
his work under a CC license that allows adap- and won’t give you the key, that lock isn’t there
tations, he always sells the right to translate for your benefit.”
the book to other languages to a commercial Cory operates under the premise that art-
publisher first. He wants to reach new poten- ists benefit when there are more, rather than
tial buyers in other parts of the world, and he fewer, places where people can access their
thinks it is more difficult to get people to pay work. The Internet has opened up those ave-
for translations if there are fan translations al- nues, but DRM is designed to limit them. “On
ready available for free. the one hand, we can credibly make our work
In his book Information Doesn’t Want to Be available to a widely dispersed audience,” he
Free, Cory likens his philosophy to thinking like said. “On the other hand, the intermediaries
a dandelion. Dandelions produce thousands we historically sold to are making it harder to
of seeds each spring, and they are blown into go around them.” Cory continually looks for
the air going in every direction. The strategy is ways to reach his audience without relying
to maximize the number of blind chances the upon major platforms that will try to take con-
dandelion has for continuing its genetic line. trol over his work.
Similarly, he says there are lots of people out
there who may want to buy creative work or
compensate authors for it in some other way.
Cory says his e-book sales have been lower
than those of his competitors, and he attri-
GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THE butes some of that to the CC license making
the work available for free. But he believes
WAY FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO people are willing to pay for content they like,
even when it is available for free, as long as it is
SHARE THEIR LOVE OF YOU WITH easy to do. He was extremely successful using
Humble Bundle, a platform that allows people
OTHER PEOPLE SOUNDS OBVIOUS, to pay what they want for DRM-free versions
of a bundle of a particular creator’s work. He
BUT IT’S REMARKABLE HOW is planning to try his own pay-what-you-want
experiment soon.
MANY PEOPLE DON’T DO IT.
Made With Creative Commons 69
Fans are particularly willing to pay when Cory’s realism about the difficulty of mak-
they feel personally connected to the artist. ing a living in the arts does not reflect pessi-
Cory works hard to create that personal con- mism about the Internet age. Instead, he says
nection. One way he does this is by personally the fact that it is hard to make a living as an
answering every single email he gets. “If you artist is nothing new. What is new, he writes
look at the history of artists, most die in pen- in his book, “is how many ways there are to
ury,” he said. “That reality means that for art- make things, and to get them into other peo-
ists, we have to find ways to support ourselves ple’s hands and minds.”
when public tastes shift, when copyright stops It has never been easier to think like a dan-
producing. Future-proofing your artistic ca- delion.
reer in many ways means figuring out how
to stay connected to those people who have
been touched by your work.”
70 Made With Creative Commons
FIGSHARE
Figshare is a for-profit company offering an figshare.com
online repository where researchers can pre-
serve and share the output of their research, Revenue model: platform providing paid
including figures, data sets, images, and vid- services to creators
eos. Founded in 2011 in the UK.
Interview date: January 28, 2016
Interviewee: Mark Hahnel, founder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
Figshare’s mission is to change the face of ac- search, there was no way for him to also pub-
ademic publishing through improved dissemi- lish the videos, figures, graphs, and data sets.
nation, discoverability, and reusability of schol- This was frustrating. Mark believed publishing
arly research. Figshare is a repository where his complete research would lead to more cita-
users can make all the output of their research tions and be better for his career.
available—from posters and presentations to Mark does not consider himself an ad-
data sets and code—in a way that’s easy to vanced software programmer. Fortunately,
discover, cite, and share. Users can upload any things like cloud-based computing and wikis
file format, which can then be previewed in a had become mainstream, and he believed
Web browser. Research output is disseminat- it ought to be possible to put all his research
ed in a way that the current scholarly-publish- online and share it with anyone. So he began
ing model does not allow. working on a solution.
Figshare founder Mark Hahnel often gets There were two key needs: licenses to make
asked: How do you make money? How do we the data citable, and persistent identifiers—
know you’ll be here in five years? Can you, as URL links that always point back to the original
a for-profit venture, be trusted? Answers have object ensuring the research is citable for the
evolved over time. long term.
Mark chose Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
to meet the need for a persistent identifier. In
the DOI system, an object’s metadata is stored
Mark traces the origins of Figshare back to as a series of numbers in the DOI name. Refer-
when he was a graduate student getting his ring to an object by its DOI is more stable than
PhD in stem cell biology. His research involved referring to it by its URL, because the location
working with videos of stem cells in motion. of an object (the web page or URL) can often
However, when he went to publish his re-
Made With Creative Commons 71
CHANGE THE FACE OF ACADE- Under the freemium model, academics
upload their research to Figshare for storage
MIC PUBLISHING THROUGH and sharing for free. Each research object is
licensed with Creative Commons and receives
IMPROVED DISSEMINATION, a DOI link. The premium option charges re-
searchers a fee for gigabytes of private storage
DISCOVERABILITY, AND RE- space, and for private online space designed
for a set number of research collaborators,
USABILITY OF SCHOLARLY which is ideal for larger teams and geograph-
ically dispersed research groups. Figshare
RESEARCH. sums up its value proposition to researchers
as “You retain ownership. You license it. You
get credit. We just make sure it persists.”
change. Mark partnered with DataCite for the In January 2012, Figshare was launched. (The
provision of DOIs for research data. fig in Figshare stands for figures.) Using invest-
As for licenses, Mark chose Creative Com- ment funds, Mark made significant improve-
mons. The open-access and open-science ments to Figshare. For example, researchers
communities were already using and recom- could quickly preview their research files with-
mending Creative Commons. Based on what in a browser without having to download them
was happening in those communities and first or require third-party software. Journals
Mark’s dialogue with peers, he went with CC0 who were still largely publishing articles as
(in the public domain) for data sets and CC BY static noninteractive PDFs became interested
(Attribution) for figures, videos, and data sets. in having Figshare provide that functionality
So Mark began using DOIs and Creative for them.
Commons for his own research work. He had Figshare diversified its business model to
a science blog where he wrote about it and include services for journals. Figshare began
made all his data open. People started com- hosting large amounts of data for the jour-
menting on his blog that they wanted to do the nals’ online articles. This additional data im-
same. So he opened it up for them to use, too. proved the quality of the articles. Outsourcing
People liked the interface and simple up- this service to Figshare freed publishers from
load process. People started asking if they having to develop this functionality as part
could also share theses, grant proposals, and of their own infrastructure. Figshare-hosted
code. Inclusion of code raised new licensing data also provides a link back to the article,
issues, as Creative Commons licenses are not generating additional click-through and read-
used for software. To allow the sharing of soft- ership—a benefit to both journal publish-
ware code, Mark chose the MIT license, but ers and researchers. Figshare now provides
GNU and Apache licenses can also be used. research-data infrastructure for a wide variety
of publishers including Wiley, Springer Nature,
PLOS, and Taylor and Francis, to name a few,
and has convinced them to use Creative Com-
Mark sought investment to make this into a mons licenses for the data.
scalable product. After a few unsuccessful
funding pitches, UK-based Digital Science ex-
pressed interest but insisted on a more viable
business model. They made an initial invest- Governments allocate significant public funds
ment, and together they came up with a free- to research. In parallel with the launch of
mium-like business model. Figshare, governments around the world be-
gan requesting the research they fund be open
72 Made With Creative Commons
and accessible. They mandated that research- You could see which license generates the big-
ers and academic institutions better manage gest impact. If the data showed that CC BY is
and disseminate their research outputs. Insti- more impactful, Mark believes more and more
tutions looking to comply with this new man- researchers and institutions will make it their
date became interested in Figshare. Figshare license of choice.
once again diversified its business model, add-
ing services for institutions.
Figshare now offers a range of fee-based
services to institutions, including their own Figshare has an Application Programming In-
minibranded Figshare space (called Figshare terface (API) that makes it possible for data
for Institutions) that securely hosts research to be pulled from Figshare and used in other
data of institutions in the cloud. Services in- applications. As an example, Mark shared a
clude not just hosting but data metrics, data Figshare data set showing the journal subscrip-
dissemination, and user-group administration. tions that higher-education institutions in the
Figshare’s workflow, and the services they of- United Kingdom paid to ten major publishers.1
fer for institutions, take into account the needs Figshare’s API enables that data to be pulled
of librarians and administrators, as well as of into an app developed by a completely differ-
the researchers. ent researcher that converts the data into a vi-
As with researchers and publishers, Fig- sually interesting graph, which any viewer can
share encouraged institutions to share alter by changing any of the variables.2
their research with CC BY (Attribution) and The free version of Figshare has built a com-
their data with CC0 (into the public domain). munity of academics, who through word of
Funders who require researchers and insti- mouth and presentations have promoted and
tutions to use open licensing believe in the spread awareness of Figshare. To amplify and
social responsibilities and benefits of making reward the community, Figshare established
research accessible to all. Publishing research an Advisor program, providing those who pro-
in this open way has come to be called open moted Figshare with hoodies and T-shirts, ear-
access. But not all funders specify CC BY; some ly access to new features, and travel expenses
institutions want to offer their researchers a when they gave presentations outside of their
choice, including less permissive licenses like area. These Advisors also helped Mark on what
CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial), CC license to use for software code and whether
BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike), or CC BY-ND to offer universities an option of using Creative
(Attribution-NoDerivs). Commons licenses.
For Mark this created a conflict. On the one Mark says his success is partly about being
hand, the principles and benefits of open sci- in the right place at the right time. He also be-
ence are at the heart of Figshare, and Mark lieves that the diversification of Figshare’s mod-
believes CC BY is the best license for this. el over time has been key to success. Figshare
On the other hand, institutions were saying now offers a comprehensive set of services to
they wouldn’t use Figshare unless it offered a researchers, publishers, and institutions.3 If he
choice in licenses. He initially refused to offer had relied solely on revenue from premium
anything beyond CC0 and CC BY, but after see- subscriptions, he believes Figshare would have
ing an open-source CERN project offer all Cre- struggled. In Figshare’s early days, their pri-
ative Commons licenses without any negative mary users were early-career and late-career
repercussions, he decided to follow suit. academics. It has only been because funders
Mark is thinking of doing a Figshare study mandated open licensing that Figshare is now
that tracks research dissemination according being used by the mainstream.
to Creative Commons license, and gathering
metrics on views, citations, and downloads.
Made With Creative Commons 73
Today Figshare has 26 million–plus page views,
7.5 million–plus downloads, 800,000–plus
user uploads, 2 million–plus articles, 500,000-
plus collections, and 5,000–plus projects. Sixty
percent of their traffic comes from Google. A
sister company called Altmetric tracks the use
of Figshare by others, including Wikipedia and
news sources.
Figshare uses the revenue it generates from
the premium subscribers, journal publishers,
and institutions to fund and expand what it
can offer to researchers for free. Figshare has
publicly stuck to its principles—keeping the
free service free and requiring the use of CC
BY and CC0 from the start—and from Mark’s
perspective, this is why people trust Figshare.
Mark sees new competitors coming forward
who are just in it for money. If Figshare was
only in it for the money, they wouldn’t care
about offering a free version. Figshare’s princi-
ples and advocacy for openness are a key dif-
ferentiator. Going forward, Mark sees Figshare
not only as supporting open access to research
but also enabling people to collaborate and
make new discoveries.
Web links
1 figshare.com/articles
/Journal_subscription_costs_FOIs_to_UK
_universities/1186832
2 retr0.shinyapps.io/journal_costs/?year
=2014&inst=19,22,38,42,59,64,80,95,136
3 figshare.com/features
74 Made With Creative Commons
FIGURE.NZ
Figure.NZ is a nonprofit charity that makes an figure.nz
online data platform designed to make data
reusable and easy to understand. Founded in Revenue model: platform providing paid ser-
2012 in New Zealand. vices to creators, donations, sponsorships
Interview date: May 3, 2016
Interviewee: Lillian Grace, founder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
In the paper Harnessing the Economic and So- truly accessible to all, with a specific focus on
cial Power of Data presented at the New Zea- New Zealand.
land Data Futures Forum in 2014,1 Figure.NZ
founder Lillian Grace said there are thousands
of valuable and relevant data sets freely avail-
able to us right now, but most people don’t Lillian had the idea for Figure.NZ in February
use them. She used to think this meant peo- 2012 while working for the New Zealand In-
ple didn’t care about being informed, but she’s stitute, a think tank concerned with improv-
come to see that she was wrong. Almost ev- ing economic prosperity, social well-being,
eryone wants to be informed about issues that environmental quality, and environmental
matter—not only to them, but also to their productivity for New Zealand and New Zea-
families, their communities, their businesses, landers. While giving talks to community and
and their country. But there’s a big difference business groups, Lillian realized “every single
between availability and accessibility of infor- issue we addressed would have been easier to
mation. Data is spread across thousands of deal with if more people understood the ba-
sites and is held within databases and spread- sic facts.” But understanding the basic facts
sheets that require both time and skill to en- sometimes requires data and research that
gage with. To use data when making a deci- you often have to pay for.
sion, you have to know what specific question Lillian began to imagine a website that lift-
to ask, identify a source that has collected the ed data up to a visual form that could be eas-
data, and manipulate complex tools to extract ily understood and freely accessed. Initially
and visualize the information within the data launched as Wiki New Zealand, the original
set. Lillian established Figure.NZ to make data idea was that people could contribute their
Made With Creative Commons 75
data and visuals via a wiki. However, few peo- and how they can be reused, and it does this
ple had graphs that could be used and shared, with Creative Commons licenses. As a result,
and there were no standards or consistency 98 percent of all government-agency data is
around the data and the visuals. Realizing the Creative Commons licensed, fitting in nicely
wiki model wasn’t working, Lillian brought the with Figure.NZ’s decision.
process of data aggregation, curation, and vi-
sual presentation in-house, and invested in
the technology to help automate some of it.
Wiki New Zealand became Figure.NZ, and ef- Lillian thinks current ideas of what a business
forts were reoriented toward providing ser- is are relatively new, only a hundred years old
vices to those wanting to open their data and or so. She’s convinced that twenty years from
present it visually. now, we will see new and different models for
Here’s how it works. Figure.NZ sources data business. Figure.NZ is set up as a nonprofit
from other organizations, including corpo- charity. It is purpose-driven but also strives
rations, public repositories, government de- to pay people well and thinks like a business.
partments, and academics. Figure.NZ imports Lillian sees the charity-nonprofit status as an
and extracts that data, and then validates and essential element for the mission and purpose
standardizes it—all with a strong eye on what of Figure.NZ. She believes Wikipedia would
will be best for users. They then make the data not work if it were for profit, and similarly, Fig-
available in a series of standardized forms, ure.NZ’s nonprofit status assures people who
both human- and machine-readable, with have data and people who want to use it that
rich metadata about the sources, the licenses, they can rely on Figure.NZ’s motives. People
and data types. Figure.NZ has a chart-design- see them as a trusted wrangler and source.
ing tool that makes simple bar, line, and area Although Figure.NZ is a social enterprise
graphs from any data source. The graphs are that openly licenses their data and graphs for
posted to the Figure.NZ website, and they can everyone to use for free, they have taken care
also be exported in a variety of formats for not to be perceived as a free service all around
print or online use. Figure.NZ makes its data the table. Lillian believes hundreds of millions
and graphs available using the Attribution (CC of dollars are spent by the government and or-
BY) license. This allows others to reuse, revise, ganizations to collect data. However, very little
remix, and redistribute Figure.NZ data and money is spent on taking that data and making
graphs as long as they give attribution to the it accessible, understandable, and useful for
original source and to Figure.NZ. decision making. Government uses some of
Lillian characterizes the initial decision to the data for policy, but Lillian believes that it is
use Creative Commons as naively fortunate. It underutilized and the potential value is much
was first recommended to her by a colleague. larger. Figure.NZ is focused on solving that
Lillian spent time looking at what Creative Com- problem. They believe a portion of money allo-
mons offered and thought it looked good, was cated to collecting data should go into making
clear, and made common sense. It was easy to sure that data is useful and generates value. If
use and easy for others to understand. Over the government wants citizens to understand
time, she’s come to realize just how fortunate why certain decisions are being made and to
and important that decision turned out to be. be more aware about what the government is
New Zealand’s government has an open-ac- doing, why not transform the data it collects
cess and licensing framework called NZGOAL, into easily understood visuals? It could even
which provides guidance for agencies when become a way for a government or any orga-
they release copyrighted and noncopyrighted nization to differentiate, market, and brand
work and material.2 It aims to standardize the itself.
licensing of works with government copyright
76 Made With Creative Commons
Figure.NZ spends a lot of time seeking to Figure.NZ also has patrons.4 Patrons donate
understand the motivations of data collectors to topic areas they care about, directly en-
and to identify the channels where it can pro- abling Figure.NZ to get data together to flesh
vide value. Every part of their business model out those areas. Patrons do not direct what
has been focused on who is going to get value data is included or excluded.
from the data and visuals. Figure.NZ also accepts philanthropic dona-
Figure.NZ has multiple lines of business. tions, which are used to provide more content,
They provide commercial services to organi- extend technology, and improve services, or
zations that want their data publicly available are targeted to fund a specific effort or pro-
and want to use Figure.NZ as their publishing vide in-kind support. As a charity, donations
platform. People who want to publish open are tax deductible.
data appreciate Figure.NZ’s ability to do it
faster, more easily, and better than they can.
Customers are encouraged to help their us-
ers find, use, and make things from the data Figure.NZ has morphed and grown over time.
they make available on Figure.NZ’s website. With data aggregation, curation, and visualiz-
Customers control what is released and the ing services all in-house, Figure.NZ has devel-
license terms (although Figure.NZ encourages oped a deep expertise in taking random styles
Creative Commons licensing). Figure.NZ also of data, standardizing it, and making it useful.
serves customers who want a specific collec- Lillian realized that Figure.NZ could easily be-
tion of charts created—for example, for their come a warehouse of seventy people doing
website or annual report. Charging the organi- data. But for Lillian, growth isn’t always good.
zations that want to make their data available In her view, bigger often means less effective.
enables Figure.NZ to provide their site free to Lillian set artificial constraints on growth, forc-
all users, to truly democratize data. ing the organization to think differently and be
Lillian notes that the current state of most more efficient. Rather than in-house growth,
data is terrible and often not well understood they are growing and building external rela-
by the people who have it. This sometimes tionships.
makes it difficult for customers and Figure.NZ
to figure out what it would cost to import, stan-
dardize, and display that data in a useful way. IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN NOW,
To deal with this, Figure.NZ uses “high-trust
contracts,” where customers allocate a certain THE BEST FUTURE IS THE ONE
budget to the task that Figure.NZ is then free
to draw from, as long as Figure.NZ frequently WHERE EVERYONE CAN MAKE
reports on what they’ve produced so the cus-
tomer can determine the value for money. This WELL-INFORMED DECISIONS.
strategy has helped build trust and transpar-
ency about the level of effort associated with
doing work that has never been done before. Figure.NZ’s website displays visuals and
A second line of business is what Figure. data associated with a wide range of cate-
NZ calls partners. ASB Bank and Statistics gories including crime, economy, education,
New Zealand are partners who back Figure. employment, energy, environment, health,
NZ’s efforts. As one example, with their sup- information and communications technology,
port Figure.NZ has been able to create Busi- industry, tourism, and many others. A search
ness Figures, a special way for businesses to function helps users find tables and graphs.
find useful data without having to know what Figure.NZ does not provide analysis or inter-
questions to ask.3 pretation of the data or visuals. Their goal is to
Made With Creative Commons 77
teach people how to think, not think for them. when many citizens in society couldn’t read or
Figure.NZ wants to create intuitive experienc- write. However, as a society, we’ve now come
es, not user manuals. to believe that reading and writing skills should
Figure.NZ believes data and visuals should be something all citizens have. We haven’t yet
be useful. They provide their customers with a adopted a similar belief around numbers and
data collection template and teach them why data literacy. We largely still believe that only
it’s important and how to use it. They’ve begun a few specially trained people can analyze and
putting more emphasis on tracking what users think with numbers.
of their website want. They also get requests “Figure.NZ may be the first organization to
from social media and through email for them assert that everyone can use numbers in their
to share data for a specific topic—for example, thinking, and it’s built a technological platform
can you share data for water quality? If they along with trust and a network of relation-
have the data, they respond quickly; if they ships to make that possible. What you can see
don’t, they try and identify the organizations on Figure.NZ are tens of thousands of graphs,
that would have that data and forge a relation- maps, and data.
ship so they can be included on Figure.NZ’s “Figure.NZ sees this as a new kind of alpha-
site. Overall, Figure.NZ is seeking to provide a bet that can help people analyze what they
place for people to be curious about, access, see around them. A way to be thoughtful and
and interpret data on topics they are interest- informed about society. A means of engaging
ed in. in conversation and shaping decision mak-
ing that transcends personal experience. The
long-term value and impact is almost impos-
sible to measure, but the goal is to help citi-
Lillian has a deep and profound vision for Fig- zens gain understanding and work together in
ure.NZ that goes well beyond simply providing more informed ways to shape the future.”
open-data services. She says things are differ- Lillian sees Figure.NZ’s model as having
ent now. “We used to live in a world where it global potential. But for now, their focus is
was really hard to share information widely. completely on making Figure.NZ work in New
And in that world, the best future was created Zealand and to get the “network effect”—
by having a few great leaders who essentially users dramatically increasing value for them-
had access to the information and made de- selves and for others through use of their ser-
cisions on behalf of others, whether it was on vice. Creative Commons is core to making the
behalf of a country or companies. network effect possible.
“But now we live in a world where it’s real-
ly easy to share information widely and also Web links
to communicate widely. In the world we live in 1 www.nzdatafutures.org.nz/sites/default
now, the best future is the one where every- /files/NZDFF_harness-the-power.pdf
one can make well-informed decisions. 2 www.ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources
“The use of numbers and data as a way of /open-government/new-zealand
making well-informed decisions is one of the -government-open-access-and
areas where there is the biggest gaps. We don’t -licensing-nzgoal-framework/
really use numbers as a part of our thinking 3 figure.nz/business/
and part of our understanding yet. 4 figure.nz/patrons/
“Part of the reason is the way data is spread
across hundreds of sites. In addition, for the
most part, deep thinking based on data is
constrained to experts because most people
don’t have data literacy. There once was a time
78 Made With Creative Commons
KNOWLEDGE
UNLATCHED
Knowledge Unlatched is a not-for-profit com- knowledgeunlatched.org
munity interest company that brings libraries
together to pool funds to publish open-access Revenue model: crowdfunding (specialized)
books. Founded in 2012 in the UK.
Interview date: February 26, 2016
Interviewee: Frances Pinter, founder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
The serial entrepreneur Dr. Frances Pinter Commercial Innovation Award for Innovation
has been at the forefront of innovation in the in Education in 2015.
publishing industry for nearly forty years. She
founded the UK-based Knowledge Unlatched
with a mission to enable open access to schol-
arly books. For Frances, the current scholarly- Dr. Pinter has been in academic publishing
book-publishing system is not working for any- most of her career. About ten years ago, she
one, and especially not for monographs in the became acquainted with the Creative Com-
humanities and social sciences. Knowledge Un- mons founder Lawrence Lessig and got inter-
latched is committed to changing this and has ested in Creative Commons as a tool for both
been working with libraries to create a sustain- protecting content online and distributing it
able alternative model for publishing scholarly free to users.
books, sharing the cost of making monographs Not long after, she ran a project in Africa
(released under a Creative Commons license) convincing publishers in Uganda and South
and savings costs over the long term. Since Africa to put some of their content online for
its launch, Knowledge Unlatched has received free using a Creative Commons license and to
several awards, including the IFLA/Brill Open see what happened to print sales. Sales went
Access award in 2014 and a Curtin University up, not down.
Made With Creative Commons 79
In 2008, Bloomsbury Academic, a new im- with an open-access version of the books re-
print of Bloomsbury Publishing in the United leased under a Creative Commons license.
Kingdom, appointed her its founding publish- This idea really took hold in her mind. She
er in London. As part of the launch, Frances didn’t really have a name for it but began
convinced Bloomsbury to differentiate them- talking about it and making presentations to
selves by putting out monographs for free on- see if there was interest. The more she talked
line under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC about it, the more people agreed it had appeal.
or BY-NC-ND, i.e., Attribution-NonCommercial She offered a bottle of champagne to anyone
or Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs). who could come up with a good name for the
This was seen as risky, as the biggest cost for idea. Her husband came up with Knowledge
publishers is getting a book to the stage where Unlatched, and after two years of generating
it can be printed. If everyone read the online interest, she decided to move forward and
book for free, there would be no print-book launch a community interest company (a UK
sales at all, and the costs associated with get- term for not-for-profit social enterprises) in
ting the book to print would be lost. Surpris- 2012.
ingly, Bloomsbury found that sales of the print
versions of these books were 10 to 20 percent
higher than normal. Frances found it intrigu-
ing that the Creative Commons–licensed free She describes the business model in a paper
online book acts as a marketing vehicle for the called Knowledge Unlatched: Toward an Open
print format. and Networked Future for Academic Publishing:
Frances began to look at customer interest
in the three forms of the book: 1) the Creative
Commons–licensed free online book in PDF 1 Publishers offer titles for sale reflecting
form, 2) the printed book, and 3) a digital ver- origination costs only via Knowledge Un-
sion of the book on an aggregator platform latched.
with enhanced features. She thought of this as
the “ice cream model”: the free PDF was vanilla 2 Individual libraries select titles either as in-
ice cream, the printed book was an ice cream dividual titles or as collections (as they do
cone, and the enhanced e-book was an ice from library suppliers now).
cream sundae.
After a while, Frances had an epiphany— 3 Their selections are sent to Knowledge
what if there was a way to get libraries to un- Unlatched specifying the titles to be pur-
derwrite the costs of making these books up chased at the stated price(s).
until they’re ready be printed, in other words,
cover the fixed costs of getting to the first digi- 4 The price, called a Title Fee (set by publish-
tal copy? Then you could either bring down the ers and negotiated by Knowledge Un-
cost of the printed book, or do a whole bunch latched), is paid to publishers to cover the
of interesting things with the printed book and fixed costs of publishing each of the titles
e-book—the ice cream cone or sundae part of that were selected by a minimum number
the model. of libraries to cover the Title Fee.
This idea is similar to the article-processing
charge some open-access journals charge re- 5 Publishers make the selected titles avail-
searchers to cover publishing costs. Frances able Open Access (on a Creative Commons
began to imagine a coalition of libraries pay- or similar open license) and are then paid
ing for the prepress costs—a “book-processing the Title Fee which is the total collected
charge”—and providing everyone in the world from the libraries.
80 Made With Creative Commons
6 Publishers make print copies, e-Pub, and ferings. Books were being bundled into eight
other digital versions of selected titles small packages separated by subject (including
available to member libraries at a discount Anthropology, History, Literature, Media and
that reflects their contribution to the Title Communications, and Politics), of around ten
Fee and incentivizes membership.1 books per package. Three hundred libraries
around the world have to commit to at least
six of the eight packages to enable unlatching.
The first round of this model resulted in a The average cost per book was just under fifty
collection of twenty-eight current titles from dollars. The unlatching process took roughly
thirteen recognized scholarly publishers being ten months. It started with a call to publish-
unlatched. The target was to have two hun- ers for titles, followed by having a library task
dred libraries participate. The cost of the pack- force select the titles, getting authors’ permis-
age per library was capped at $1,680, which sions, getting the libraries to pledge, billing the
was an average price of sixty dollars per book, libraries, and finally, unlatching.
but in the end they had nearly three hundred
libraries sharing the costs, and the price per
book came in at just under forty-three dollars.
The open-access, Creative Commons ver- The longest part of the whole process is get-
sions of these twenty-eight books are still ting libraries to pledge and commit funds. It
available online.4 Most books have been li- takes about five months, as library buy-in has
censed with CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND. Au- to fit within acquisition cycles, budget cycles,
thors are the copyright holder, not the publish- and library-committee meetings.
er, and negotiate choice of license as part of Knowledge Unlatched informs and recruits
the publishing agreement. Frances has found libraries through social media, mailing lists,
that most authors want to retain control over listservs, and library associations. Of the three
the commercial and remix use of their work. hundred libraries that participated in the first
Publishers list the book in their catalogs, and round, 80 percent are also participating in the
the noncommercial restriction in the Creative second round, and there are an additional
Commons license ensures authors continue to eighty new libraries taking part. Knowledge
get royalties on sales of physical copies. Unlatched is also working not just with individ-
There are three cost variables to consider ual libraries but also library consortia, which
for each round: the overall cost incurred by has been getting even more libraries involved.
the publishers, total cost for each library to Knowledge Unlatched is scaling up, offering
acquire all the books, and the individual price 150 new titles in the second half of 2016. It will
per book. The fee publishers charge for each also offer backlist titles, and in 2017 will start
title is a fixed charge, and Knowledge Un- to make journals open access too.
latched calculates the total amount for all the
books being unlatched at a time. The cost of
an order for each library is capped at a maxi-
mum based on a minimum number of libraries Knowledge Unlatched deliberately chose
participating. If the number of participating li- monographs as the initial type of book to un-
braries exceeds the minimum, then the cost of latch. Monographs are foundational and im-
the order and the price per book go down for portant, but also problematic to keep going in
each library. the standard closed publishing model.
The second round, recently completed, un- The cost for the publisher to get to a first dig-
latched seventy-eight books from twenty-six ital copy of a monograph is $5,000 to $50,000.
publishers. For this round, Frances was ex- A good one costs in the $10,000 to $15,000
perimenting with the size and shape of the of- range. Monographs typically don’t sell a lot of
Made With Creative Commons 81
copies. A publisher who in the past sold three of their money should be spent to support
thousand copies now typically sells only three open access. “Free ride” is more like commu-
hundred. That makes unlatching monographs nity responsibility. By the end of March 2016,
a low risk for publishers. For the first round, the round-one books had been downloaded
it took five months to get thirteen publishers. nearly eighty thousand times in 175 countries.
For the second round, it took one month to get For publishers, authors, and librarians, the
twenty-six. Knowledge Unlatched model for monographs
Authors don’t generally make a lot of roy- is a win-win-win.
alties from monographs. Royalties range from
zero dollars to 5 to 10 percent of receipts. The
value to the author is the awareness it brings
to them; when their book is being read, it in- In the first round, Knowledge Unlatched’s over-
creases their reputation. Open access through heads were covered by grants. In the second
unlatching generates many more downloads round, they aim to demonstrate the model is
and therefore awareness. (On the Knowledge sustainable. Libraries and publishers will each
Unlatched website, you can find interviews pay a 7.5 percent service charge that will go
with the twenty-eight round-one authors de- toward Knowledge Unlatched’s running costs.
scribing their experience and the benefits of With plans to scale up in future rounds, Fran-
taking part.)5 ces figures they can fully recover costs when
Library budgets are constantly being they are unlatching two hundred books at a
squeezed, partly due to the inflation of journal time. Moving forward, Knowledge Unlatched
subscriptions. But even without budget con- is making investments in technology and pro-
straints, academic libraries are moving away cesses. Future plans include unlatching jour-
from buying physical copies. An academic li- nals and older books.
brary catalog entry is typically a URL to wher- Frances believes that Knowledge Unlatched
ever the book is hosted. Or if they have enough is tapping into new ways of valuing academ-
electronic storage space, they may download ic content. It’s about considering how many
the digital file into their digital repository. Only people can find, access, and use your content
secondarily do they consider getting a print without pay barriers. Knowledge Unlatched
book, and if they do, they buy it separately taps into the new possibilities and behaviors of
from the digital version. the digital world. In the Knowledge Unlatched
Knowledge Unlatched offers libraries a model, the content-creation process is exactly
compelling economic argument. Many of the the same as it always has been, but the eco-
participating libraries would have bought a nomics are different. For Frances, Knowledge
copy of the monograph anyway, but instead of Unlatched is connected to the past but moving
paying $95 for a print copy or $150 for a digital into the future, an evolution rather than a rev-
multiple-use copy, they pay $50 to unlatch. It olution.
costs them less, and it opens the book to not
just the participating libraries, but to the world. Web links
Not only do the economics make sense, 1 www.pinter.org.uk/pdfs/Toward_an
but there is very strong alignment with library _Open.pdf
mandates. The participating libraries pay less 2 www.oapen.org
than they would have in the closed model, and 3 www.hathitrust.org
the open-access book is available to all librar- 4 collections.knowledgeunlatched.org
ies. While this means nonparticipating librar- /collection-availability-1/
ies could be seen as free riders, in the library 5 www.knowledgeunlatched.org
world, wealthy libraries are used to paying /featured-authors-section/
more than poor libraries and accept that part
82 Made With Creative Commons
LUMEN
LEARNING
Lumen Learning is a for-profit company help- lumenlearning.com
ing educational institutions use open educa-
tional resources (OER). Founded in 2013 in Revenue model: charging for custom ser-
the U.S. vices, grant funding
Interview date: December 21, 2015
Interviewees: David Wiley and Kim Thanos, cofounders
Profile written by Paul Stacey
Cofounded by open education visionary Dr. After a second round of funding, a total of
David Wiley and education-technology strat- more than twenty-five institutions participat-
egist Kim Thanos, Lumen Learning is dedi- ed in and benefited from this project. It was
cated to improving student success, bringing career changing for David and Kim to see the
new ideas to pedagogy, and making educa- impact this initiative had on low-income stu-
tion more affordable by facilitating adoption dents. David and Kim sought further funding
of open educational resources. In 2012, David from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
and Kim partnered on a grant-funded project who asked them to define a plan to scale their
called the Kaleidoscope Open Course Initia- work in a financially sustainable way. That is
tive.1 It involved a set of fully open general-ed- when they decided to create Lumen Learning.
ucation courses across eight colleges predom- David and Kim went back and forth on
inantly serving at-risk students, with goals to whether it should be a nonprofit or for-
dramatically reduce textbook costs and collab- profit. A nonprofit would make it a more com-
orate to improve the courses to help students fortable fit with the education sector but meant
succeed. David and Kim exceeded those goals: they’d be constantly fund-raising and seeking
the cost of the required textbooks, replaced grants from philanthropies. Also, grants usual-
with OER, decreased to zero dollars, and aver- ly require money to be used in certain ways for
age student-success rates improved by 5 to 10 specific deliverables. If you learn things along
percent when compared with previous years. the way that change how you think the grant
Made With Creative Commons 83
money should be used, there often isn’t a lot • measure improvements in student success
of flexibility to do so. with metrics like passing rates, persistence,
But as a for-profit, they’d have to convince and course completion; and
educational institutions to pay for what Lumen
had to offer. On the positive side, they’d have • collaborate with faculty to make ongoing
more control over what to do with the revenue improvements to OER based on student
and investment money; they could make deci- success research.
sions to invest the funds or use them different-
ly based on the situation and shifting oppor- Lumen has developed a suite of open, Cre-
tunities. In the end, they chose the for-profit ative Commons–licensed courseware in more
status, with its different model for and ap- than sixty-five subjects. All courses are freely
proach to sustainability. and publicly available right off their website.
Right from the start, David and Kim posi- They can be copied and used by others as long
tioned Lumen Learning as a way to help insti- as they provide attribution to Lumen Learning
tutions engage in open educational resourc- following the terms of the Creative Commons
es, or OER. OER are teaching, learning, and license.
research materials, in all different media, that Then there are three types of bundled
reside in the public domain or are released un- services that cost money. One option, which
der an open license that permits free use and Lumen calls Candela courseware, offers inte-
repurposing by others. gration with the institution’s learning-manage-
ment system, technical and pedagogical sup-
port, and tracking of effectiveness. Candela
courseware costs institutions ten dollars per
Originally, Lumen did custom contracts for enrolled student.
each institution. This was complicated and A second option is Waymaker, which offers
challenging to manage. However, through the services of Candela but adds personalized
that process patterns emerged which al- learning technologies, such as study plans,
lowed them to generalize a set of approaches automated messages, and assessments, and
and offerings. Today they don’t customize as helps instructors find and support the stu-
much as they used to, and instead they tend dents who need it most. Waymaker courses
to work with customers who can use their cost twenty-five dollars per enrolled student.
off-the-shelf options. Lumen finds that insti- The third and emerging line of business for
tutions and faculty are generally very good at Lumen is providing guidance and support for
seeing the value Lumen brings and are willing institutions and state systems that are pursu-
to pay for it. Serving disadvantaged learner ing the development of complete OER degrees.
populations has led Lumen to be very prag- Often called Z-Degrees, these programs elimi-
matic; they describe what they offer in quan- nate textbook costs for students in all courses
titative terms—with facts and figures—and that make up the degree (both required and
in a way that is very student-focused. Lumen elective) by replacing commercial textbooks
Learning helps colleges and universities— and other expensive resources with OER.
Lumen generates revenue by charging for
• replace expensive textbooks in high-enroll- their value-added tools and services on top of
ment courses with OER; their free courses, just as solar-power compa-
nies provide the tools and services that help
• provide enrolled students day one access people use a free resource—sunlight. And Lu-
to Lumen’s fully customizable OER course men’s business model focuses on getting the
materials through the institution’s learn- institutions to pay, not the students. With proj-
ing-management system; ects they did prior to Lumen, David and Kim
84 Made With Creative Commons
learned that students who have access to all website’s footer, which stays the same for all
course materials from day one have greater pages. This doesn’t quite work, however, when
success. If students had to pay, Lumen would mixing different OER together.
have to restrict access to those who paid. Right Remixing OER often results in multiple at-
from the start, their stance was that they would tributions on every page of every course—text
not put their content behind a paywall. Lumen from one place, images from another, and
invests zero dollars in technologies and pro- videos from yet another. Some are licensed
cesses for restricting access—no digital rights as Attribution (CC BY), others as Attribution-
management, no time bombs. While this has ShareAlike (CC BY-SA). If this information is put
been a challenge from a business-model per- within the text of the course, faculty members
spective, from an open-access perspective, it sometimes try to edit it and students find it a
has generated immense goodwill in the com- distraction. Lumen dealt with this challenge by
munity. capturing the license and attribution informa-
tion as metadata, and getting it to show up at
the end of each page.
In most cases, development of their courses
is funded by the institution Lumen has a con-
tract with. When creating new courses, Lu- Lumen’s commitment to open licensing and
men typically works with the faculty who are helping low-income students has led to strong
teaching the new course. They’re often part of relationships with institutions, open-educa-
the institution paying Lumen, but sometimes tion enthusiasts, and grant funders. People
Lumen has to expand the team and contract in their network generously increase the vis-
faculty from other institutions. First, the fac- ibility of Lumen through presentations, word
ulty identifies all of the course’s learning out- of mouth, and referrals. Sometimes the num-
comes. Lumen then searches for, aggregates, ber of general inquiries exceed Lumen’s sales
and curates the best OER they can find that capacity.
addresses those learning needs, which the fac- To manage demand and ensure the success
ulty reviews. of projects, their strategy is to be proactive
Sometimes faculty like the existing OER but and focus on what’s going on in higher educa-
not the way it is presented. The open licens- tion in different regions of the United States,
ing of existing OER allows Lumen to pick and watching out for things happening at the sys-
choose from images, videos, and other media tem level in a way that fits with what Lumen
to adapt and customize the course. Lumen offers. A great example is the Virginia com-
creates new content as they discover gaps in munity college system, which is building out
existing OER. Test-bank items and feedback Z-Degrees. David and Kim say there are nine
for students on their progress are areas where other U.S. states with similar system-level ac-
new content is frequently needed. Once a tivity where Lumen is strategically focusing its
course is created, Lumen puts it on their plat- efforts. Where there are projects that would
form with all the attributions and links to the require a lot of resources on Lumen’s part,
original sources intact, and any of Lumen’s they prioritize the ones that would impact the
new content is given an Attribution (CC BY) largest number of students.
license.
Using only OER made them experience first-
hand how complex it could be to mix different-
ly licensed work together. A common strategy As a business, Lumen is committed to open-
with OER is to place the Creative Commons ness. There are two core nonnegotiables: Lu-
license and attribution information in the men’s use of CC BY, the most permissive of the
Made With Creative Commons 85
Creative Commons licenses, for all the materi- and strives for a correct balance of all these
als it creates; and day-one access for students. factors.
Having clear nonnegotiables allows them to Licensing all the content they produce with
then engage with the education community to CC BY is a key part of giving more value than
solve for other challenges and work with insti- they take. They’ve also worked hard at finding
tutions to identify new business models that the right structure for their value-add and how
achieve institution goals, while keeping Lumen to package it in a way that is understandable
healthy. and repeatable.
Openness also means that Lumen’s OER
must necessarily be nonexclusive and nonri-
valrous. This represents several big challenges
for the business model: Why should you invest As of the fall 2016 term, Lumen had eighty-six
in creating something that people will be re- different open courses, working relationships
luctant to pay for? How do you ensure that the with ninety-two institutions, and more than
investment the diverse education community seventy-five thousand student enrollments.
makes in OER is not exploited? Lumen thinks Lumen received early start-up funding from
we all need to be clear about how we are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the
benefiting from and contributing to the open Hewlett Foundation, and the Shuttleworth
community. Foundation. Since then, Lumen has also at-
In the OER sector, there are examples of tracted investment funding. Over the last
corporations, and even institutions, acting as three years, Lumen has been roughly 60 per-
free riders. Some simply take and use open cent grant funded, 20 percent revenue earned,
resources without paying anything or contrib- and 20 percent funded with angel capital. Go-
uting anything back. Others give back the min- ing forward, their strategy is to replace grant
imum amount so they can save face. Sustain- funding with revenue.
ability will require those using open resources In creating Lumen Learning, David and Kim
to give back an amount that seems fair or even say they’ve landed on solutions they never
give back something that is generous. imagined, and there is still a lot of learning
Lumen does track institutions accessing taking place. For them, open business models
and using their free content. They proactively are an emerging field where we are all learn-
contact those institutions, with an estimate of ing through sharing. Their biggest recommen-
how much their students are saving and en- dations for others wanting to pursue the open
couraging them to switch to a paid model. Lu- model are to make your commitment to open
men explains the advantages of the paid mod- resources public, let people know where you
el: a more interactive relationship with Lumen; stand, and don’t back away from it. It really is
integration with the institution’s learning-man- about trust.
agement system; a guarantee of support for
faculty and students; and future sustainability Web link
with funding supporting the evolution and im- 1 lumenlearning.com/innovative-projects/
provement of the OER they are using.
Lumen works hard to be a good corporate
citizen in the OER community. For David and
Kim, a good corporate citizen gives more than
they take, adds unique value, and is very trans-
parent about what they are taking from com-
munity, what they are giving back, and what
they are monetizing. Lumen believes these
are the building blocks of a sustainable model
86 Made With Creative Commons
JONATHAN
MANN
Jonathan Mann is a singer and songwriter Revenue model: charging for custom ser-
who is most well known as the “Song A Day” vices, pay-what-you-want, crowdfunding
guy. Based in the U.S. (subscription-based), charging for in-person
version (speaking engagements and musical
jonathanmann.net and performances)
jonathanmann.bandcamp.com
Interview date: February 22, 2016
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
Jonathan Mann thinks of his business model as 2010, when he read that Apple was having a
“hustling”—seizing nearly every opportunity conference the following day to address a sna-
he sees to make money. The bulk of his income fu related to the iPhone 4. He decided to write
comes from writing songs under commission and post a song about the iPhone 4 that day,
for people and companies, but he has a wide and the next day he got a call from the public
variety of income sources. He has supporters relations people at Apple wanting to use and
on the crowdfunding site Patreon. He gets promote his video at the Apple conference.
advertising revenue from YouTube and Band- The song then went viral, and the experience
camp, where he posts all of his music. He gives landed him in Time magazine.
paid speaking engagements about creativity Jonathan’s successful “hustling” is also
and motivation. He has been hired by major about old-fashioned persistence. He is cur-
conferences to write songs summarizing what rently in his eighth straight year of writing one
speakers have said in the conference sessions. song each day. He holds the Guinness World
His entrepreneurial spirit is coupled with a Record for consecutive daily songwriting, and
willingness to take action quickly. A perfect il- he is widely known as the “song-a-day guy.”
lustration of his ability to act fast happened in
Made With Creative Commons 87
He fell into this role by, naturally, seizing a and even Kickstarter campaigns like the one
random opportunity a friend alerted him to that funded the production of this book.
seven years ago—an event called Fun-A-Day,
where people are supposed to create a piece
of art every day for thirty-one days straight.
He was in need of a new project, so he decided Jonathan can’t recall when exactly he first
to give it a try by writing and posting a song learned about Creative Commons, but he be-
each day. He added a video component to the gan applying CC licenses to his songs and vid-
songs because he knew people were more eos as soon as he discovered the option. “CC
likely to watch video online than simply listen- seems like such a no-brainer,” Jonathan said.
ing to audio files. “I don’t understand how anything else would
He had a really good time doing the thirty- make sense. It seems like such an obvious
one-day challenge, so he decided to see if thing that you would want your work to be
he could continue it for one year. He never able to be shared.”
stopped. He has written and posted a new His songs are essentially marketing for his
song literally every day, seven days a week, services, so obviously the further his songs
since he began the project in 2009. When he spread, the better. Using CC licenses helps
isn’t writing songs that he is hired to write by grease the wheels, letting people know that
clients, he writes songs about whatever is on Jonathan allows and encourages them to copy,
his mind that day. His songs are catchy and interact with, and remix his music. “If you let
mostly lighthearted, but they often contain someone cover your song or remix it or use
at least an undercurrent of a deeper theme parts of it, that’s how music is supposed to
or meaning. Occasionally, they are extreme- work,” Jonathan said. “That is how music has
ly personal, like the song he cowrote with his worked since the beginning of time. Our me-
exgirlfriend announcing their breakup. Rain me, mine-mine culture has undermined that.”
or shine, in sickness or health, Jonathan posts There are some people who cover his songs
and writes a song every day. If he is on a flight fairly regularly, and he would never shut that
or otherwise incapable of getting Internet ac- down. But he acknowledges there is a lot more
cess in time to meet the deadline, he will pre- he could do to build community. “There is all of
pare ahead and have someone else post the this conventional wisdom about how to build
song for him. an audience online, and I generally think I don’t
Over time, the song-a-day gig became the do any of that,” Jonathan said.
basis of his livelihood. In the beginning, he He does have a fan community he cultivates
made money one of two ways. The first was on Bandcamp, but it isn’t his major focus. “I do
by entering a wide variety of contests and win- have a core audience that has stuck around for
ning a handful. The second was by having the a really long time, some even longer than I’ve
occasional song and video go some varying been doing song-a-day,” he said. “There is also
degree of viral, which would bring more eye- a transitional aspect that drop in and get what
balls and mean that there were more people they need and then move on.” Focusing less on
wanting him to write songs for them. Today he community building than other artists makes
earns most of his money this way. sense given Jonathan’s primary income source
His website explains his gig as “taking any of writing custom songs for clients.
message, from the super simple to the total- Jonathan recognizes what comes naturally
ly complicated, and conveying that message to him and leverages those skills. Through the
through a heartfelt, fun and quirky song.” He practice of daily songwriting, he realized he has
charges $500 to create a produced song and a gift for distilling complicated subjects into
$300 for an acoustic song. He has been hired simple concepts and putting them to music. In
for product launches, weddings, conferences, his song “How to Choose a Master Password,”
88 Made With Creative Commons
IT SEEMS LIKE SUCH AN OBVIOUS too much from his natural style. “My style is
silly, so I can’t really accommodate people who
THING THAT YOU WOULD WANT want something super serious,” Jonathan said.
“I do what I do very easily, and it’s part of who
YOUR WORK TO BE ABLE TO BE I am.” Jonathan hasn’t gotten into writing com-
mercials for the same reasons; he is best at us-
SHARED. ing his own unique style rather than mimicking
others.
Jonathan explained the process of creating a
secure password in a silly, simple song. He was Jonathan’s song-a-day commitment exempli-
hired to write the song by a client who handed fies the power of habit and grit. Conventional
him a long technical blog post from which to wisdom about creative productivity, including
draw the information. Like a good (and rare) advice in books like the best-seller The Creative
journalist, he translated the technical concepts Habit by Twyla Tharp, routinely emphasizes the
into something understandable. importance of ritual and action. No amount of
When he is hired by a client to write a song, planning can replace the value of simple prac-
he first asks them to send a list of talking tice and just doing. Jonathan Mann’s work is a
points and other information they want to living embodiment of these principles.
include in the song. He puts all of that into a When he speaks about his work, he talks
text file and starts moving things around, cut- about how much the song-a-day process has
ting and pasting until the message starts to changed him. Rather than seeing any given
come together. The first thing he tries to do is piece of work as precious and getting stuck
grok the core message and develop the cho- on trying to make it perfect, he has become
rus. Then he looks for connections or parts comfortable with just doing. If today’s song is a
he can make rhyme. The entire process really bust, tomorrow’s song might be better.
does resemble good journalism, but of course Jonathan seems to have this mentality about
the final product of his work is a song rather his career more generally. He is constantly ex-
than news. “There is something about being perimenting with ways to make a living while
challenged and forced to take information sharing his work as widely as possible, seeing
that doesn’t seem like it should be sung about what sticks. While he has major accomplish-
or doesn’t seem like it lends itself to a song,” ments he is proud of, like being in the Guinness
he said. “I find that creative challenge really World Records or having his song used by Steve
satisfying. I enjoy getting lost in that process.” Jobs, he says he never truly feels successful.
Jonathan admits that in an ideal world, he “Success feels like it’s over,” he said. “To a
would exclusively write the music he wanted certain extent, a creative person is not ever
to write, rather than what clients hire him to going to feel completely satisfied because then
write. But his business model is about capi- so much of what drives you would be gone.”
talizing on his strengths as a songwriter, and
he has found a way to keep it interesting for
himself.
Jonathan uses nearly every tool possible to
make money from his art, but he does have
lines he won’t cross. He won’t write songs
about things he fundamentally does not be-
lieve in, and there are times he has turned
down jobs on principle. He also won’t stray
Made With Creative Commons 89
90 Made With Creative Commons
NOUN
PROJECT
The Noun Project is a for-profit company thenounproject.com
offering an online platform to display visual
icons from a global network of designers. Revenue model: charging a transaction fee,
Founded in 2010 in the U.S. charging for custom services
Interview date: October 6, 2015
Interviewee: Edward Boatman, cofounder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
The Noun Project creates and shares visual couldn’t find any website that could provide
language. There are millions who use Noun them. Perhaps his idea for creating a library
Project symbols to simplify communication of icons could actually help people in similar
across borders, languages, and cultures. situations.
The original idea for the Noun Project came With his partner, Sofya Polyakov, he began
to cofounder Edward Boatman while he was collecting symbols for a website and writing a
a student in architecture design school. He’d business plan. Inspiration came from the book
always done a lot of sketches and started to Professor and the Madman, which chronicles
draw what used to fascinate him as a child, the use of crowdsourcing to create the Ox-
like trains, sequoias, and bulldozers. He began ford English Dictionary in 1870. Edward began
thinking how great it would be if he had a sim- to imagine crowdsourcing icons and symbols
ple image or small icon of every single object from volunteer designers around the world.
or concept on the planet. Then Edward got laid off during the reces-
When Edward went on to work at an archi- sion, which turned out to be a huge catalyst.
tecture firm, he had to make a lot of presenta- He decided to give his idea a go, and in 2010
tion boards for clients. But finding high-quality Edward and Sofya launched the Noun Proj-
sources for symbols and icons was difficult. He ect with a Kickstarter campaign, back when
Made With Creative Commons 91
Kickstarter was in its infancy.1 They thought ing to give credit, they can use CC0 to put the
it’d be a good way to introduce the global web work into the public domain.
community to their idea. Their goal was to
raise $1,500, but in twenty days they got over
$14,000. They realized their idea had the po-
tential to be something much bigger. Noun Project’s business model and means of
They created a platform where symbols generating revenue have evolved significantly
and icons could be uploaded, and Edward be- over time. Their initial plan was to sell T-shirts
gan recruiting talented designers to contrib- with the icons on it, which in retrospect Edward
ute their designs, a process he describes as a says was a horrible idea. They did get a lot of
relatively easy sell. Lots of designers have old email from people saying they loved the icons
drawings just gathering “digital dust” on their but asking if they could pay a fee instead of
hard drives. It’s easy to convince them to final- giving attribution. Ad agencies (among others)
ly share them with the world. wanted to keep marketing and presentation
The Noun Project currently has about seven materials clean and free of attribution state-
thousand designers from around the world. ments. For Edward, “That’s when our lightbulb
But not all submissions are accepted. The went off.”
Noun Project’s quality-review process means They asked their global network of design-
that only the best works become part of its ers whether they’d be open to receiving mod-
collection. They make sure to provide encour- est remuneration instead of attribution. De-
aging, constructive feedback whenever they signers saw it as a win-win. The idea that you
reject a piece of work, which maintains and could offer your designs for free and have a
builds the relationship they have with their global audience and maybe even make some
global community of designers. money was pretty exciting for most designers.
The Noun Project first adopted a model
whereby using an icon without giving attribu-
tion would cost $1.99 per icon. The model’s
Creative Commons is an integral part of the second iteration added a subscription com-
Noun Project’s business model; this decision ponent, where there would be a monthly fee
was inspired by Chris Anderson’s book Free: to access a certain number of icons—ten, fif-
The Future of Radical Price, which introduced ty, a hundred, or five hundred. However, us-
Edward to the idea that you could build a busi- ers didn’t like these hard-count options. They
ness model around free content. preferred to try out many similar icons to see
Edward knew he wanted to offer a free visual which worked best before eventually choos-
language while still providing some protection ing the one they wanted to use. So the Noun
and reward for its contributors. There is a ten- Project moved to an unlimited model, where-
sion between those two goals, but for Edward, by users have unlimited access to the whole
Creative Commons licenses bring this idealism library for a flat monthly fee. This service is
and business opportunity together elegantly. called NounPro and costs $9.99 per month.
He chose the Attribution (CC BY) license, which Edward says this model is working well—good
means people can download the icons for free for customers, good for creators, and good for
and modify them and even use them commer- the platform.
cially. The requirement to give attribution to Customers then began asking for an ap-
the original creator ensures that the creator plication-programming interface (API), which
can build a reputation and get global recogni- would allow Noun Project icons and symbols
tion for their work. And if they simply want to to be directly accessed from within other ap-
offer an icon that people can use without hav- plications. Edward knew that the icons and
symbols would be valuable in a lot of different
92 Made With Creative Commons
contexts and that they couldn’t possibly know this time as it’s providing more service to the
all of them in advance, so they built an API with user.
a lot of flexibility. Knowing that most API appli- The Noun Project tries to be completely
cations would want to use the icons without transparent about their royalty structure.2
giving attribution, the API was built with the They tend to over communicate with cre-
aim of charging for its use. You can use what’s ators about it because building trust is the top
called the “Playground API” for free to test how priority.
it integrates with your application, but full im- For most creators, contributing to the
plementation will require you to purchase the Noun Project is not a full-time job but some-
API Pro version. thing they do on the side. Edward categoriz-
es monthly earnings for creators into three
broad categories: enough money to buy beer;
enough to pay the bills; and most successful of
The Noun Project shares revenue with its in- all, enough to pay the rent.
ternational designers. For one-off purchases,
the revenue is split 70 percent to the designer
and 30 percent to Noun Project.
Recently the Noun Project launched a new
app called Lingo. Designers can use Lingo to
THE NOUN PROJECT’S SUCCESS organize not just their Noun Project icons and
symbols but also their photos, illustrations, UX
LIES IN CREATING SERVICES designs, et cetera. You simply drag any visual
item directly into Lingo to save it. Lingo also
AND CONTENT THAT ARE A works for teams so people can share visuals
with each other and search across their com-
STRATEGIC MIX OF FREE AND PAID bined collections. Lingo is free for personal use.
A pro version for $9.99 per month lets you add
WHILE STAYING TRUE TO THEIR guests. A team version for $49.95 per month
allows up to twenty-five team members to col-
MISSION—CREATING, SHARING, laborate, and to view, use, edit, and add new
assets to each other’s collections. And if you
AND CELEBRATING THE WORLD’S subscribe to NounPro, you can access Noun
Project from within Lingo.
VISUAL LANGUAGE. The Noun Project gives a ton of value away
for free. A very large percentage of their rough-
ly one million members have a free account,
The revenue from premium purchases (the but there are still lots of paid accounts coming
subscription and API options) is split a little dif- from digital designers, advertising and design
ferently. At the end of each month, the total agencies, educators, and others who need to
revenue from subscriptions is divided by Noun communicate ideas visually.
Project’s total number of downloads, resulting
in a rate per download—for example, it could
be $0.13 per download for that month. For
each download, the revenue is split 40 percent For Edward, “creating, sharing, and celebrating
to the designer and 60 percent to the Noun the world’s visual language” is the most im-
Project. (For API usage, it’s per use instead of portant aspect of what they do; it’s their stat-
per download.) Noun Project’s share is higher ed mission. It differentiates them from others
who offer graphics, icons, or clip art.
Made With Creative Commons 93
Noun Project creators agree. When sur- model. The Noun Project’s success lies in cre-
veyed on why they participate in the Noun ating services and content that are a strategic
Project, this is how designers rank their rea- mix of free and paid while staying true to their
sons: 1) to support the Noun Project mission, mission—creating, sharing, and celebrating
2) to promote their own personal brand, and the world’s visual language. Integrating Cre-
3) to generate money. It’s striking to see that ative Commons into their model has been key
money comes third, and mission, first. If you to that goal.
want to engage a global network of contribu-
tors, it’s important to have a mission beyond Web links
making money. 1 www.kickstarter.com/projects/tnp
In Edward’s view, Creative Commons is cen- /building-a-free-collection-of-our-worlds-
tral to their mission of sharing and social good. visual-sy/description
Using Creative Commons makes the Noun 2 thenounproject.com/handbook
Project’s mission genuine and has generated /royalties/#getting_paid
a lot of their initial traction and credibility. CC 3 thenounproject.com/iconathon/
comes with a built-in community of users and
fans.
Edward told us, “Don’t underestimate the
power of a passionate community around
your product or your business. They are go-
ing to go to bat for you when you’re getting
ripped in the media. If you go down the road
of choosing to work with Creative Commons,
you’re taking the first step to building a great
community and tapping into a really awesome
community that comes with it. But you need
to continue to foster that community through
other initiatives and continue to nurture it.”
The Noun Project nurtures their creators’
second motivation—promoting a personal
brand—by connecting every icon and symbol
to the creator’s name and profile page; each
profile features their full collection. Users can
also search the icons by the creator’s name.
The Noun Project also builds community
through Iconathons—hackathons for icons.2
In partnership with a sponsoring organization,
the Noun Project comes up with a theme (e.g.,
sustainable energy, food bank, guerrilla gar-
dening, human rights) and a list of icons that
are needed, which designers are invited to
create at the event. The results are vectorized,
and added to the Noun Project using CC0 so
they can be used by anyone for free.
Providing a free version of their product
that satisfies a lot of their customers’ needs
has actually enabled the Noun Project to build
the paid version, using a service-oriented
94 Made With Creative Commons
OPEN DATA
INSTITUTE
The Open Data Institute is an independent theodi.org
nonprofit that connects, equips, and inspires
people around the world to innovate with Revenue model: grant and government fund-
data. Founded in 2012 in the UK. ing, charging for custom services, donations
Interview date: November 11, 2015
Interviewee: Jeni Tennison, technical director
Profile written by Paul Stacey
Cofounded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir is not only accurate and timely, but open and
Nigel Shadbolt in 2012, the London-based accessible, it opens up new possibilities. Open
Open Data Institute (ODI) offers data-relat- data can be a resource businesses use to build
ed training, events, consulting services, and new products and services. It can help govern-
research. For ODI, Creative Commons licens- ments measure progress, improve efficiency,
es are central to making their own business and target investments. It can help citizens im-
model and their customers’ open. CC BY (At- prove their lives by better understanding what
tribution), CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike), is happening around them.
and CC0 (placed in the public domain) all play The Open Data Institute’s 2012–17 business
a critical role in ODI’s mission to help people plan starts out by describing its vision to es-
around the world innovate with data. tablish itself as a world-leading center and to
Data underpins planning and decision research and be innovative with the opportu-
making across all aspects of society. Weather nities created by the UK government’s open
data helps farmers know when to plant their data policy. (The government was an early pio-
crops, flight time data from airplane compa- neer in open policy and open-data initiatives.)
nies helps us plan our travel, data on local It goes on to say that the ODI wants to—
housing informs city planning. When this data
Made With Creative Commons 95
• demonstrate the commercial value of open these matching funds in response to market
government data and how open-data poli- needs.
cies affect this;
• develop the economic benefits case and
business models for open data; On the commercial side, ODI generates fund-
ing through memberships, training, and advi-
• help UK businesses use open data; and sory services.
You can join the ODI as an individual or com-
• show how open data can improve public mercial member. Individual membership is
services.1 pay-what-you-can, with options ranging from
£1 to £100. Members receive a newsletter and
ODI is very explicit about how it wants to related communications and a discount on
make open business models, and defining ODI training courses and the annual summit,
what this means. Jeni Tennison, ODI’s techni- and they can display an ODI-supporter badge
cal director, puts it this way: “There is a whole on their website. Commercial membership is
ecosystem of open—open-source software, divided into two tiers: small to medium size
open government, open-access research— enterprises and nonprofits at £720 a year, and
and a whole ecosystem of data. ODI’s work corporations and government organizations
cuts across both, with an emphasis on where at £2,200 a year. Commercial members have
they overlap—with open data.” ODI’s particu- greater opportunities to connect and collab-
lar focus is to show open data’s potential for orate, explore the benefits of open data, and
revenue. unlock new business opportunities. (All mem-
As an independent nonprofit, ODI secured bers are listed on their website.)2
£10 million over five years from the UK gov- ODI provides standardized open data train-
ernment via Innovate UK, an agency that pro- ing courses in which anyone can enroll. The
motes innovation in science and technology. initial idea was to offer an intensive and aca-
For this funding, ODI has to secure matching demically oriented diploma in open data, but
funds from other sources, some of which were it quickly became clear there was no market
met through a $4.75-million investment from for that. Instead, they offered a five-day-long
the Omidyar Network. public training course, which has subsequent-
ly been reduced to three days; now the most
popular course is one day long. The fee, in ad-
dition to the time commitment, can be a bar-
Jeni started out as a developer and technical rier for participation. Jeni says, “Most of the
architect for data.gov.uk, the UK government’s people who would be able to pay don’t know
pioneering open-data initiative. She helped they need it. Most who know they need it can’t
make data sets from government depart- pay.” Public-sector organizations sometimes
ments available as open data. She joined ODI give vouchers to their employees so they can
in 2012 when it was just starting up, as one of attend as a form of professional development.
six people. It now has a staff of about sixty. ODI customizes training for clients as well,
ODI strives to have half its annual bud- for which there is more demand. Custom train-
get come from the core UK government and ing usually emerges through an established
Omidyar grants, and the other half from proj- relationship with an organization. The training
ect-based research and commercial work. program is based on a definition of open-data
In Jeni’s view, having this balance of revenue knowledge as applicable to the organization
sources establishes some stability, but also and on the skills needed by their high-level
keeps them motivated to go out and generate executives, management, and technical staff.
96 Made With Creative Commons
The training tends to generate high interest IT IS PERFECTLY POSSIBLE
and commitment.
Education about open data is also a part TO GENERATE SUSTAINABLE
of ODI’s annual summit event, where curat-
ed presentations and speakers showcase the REVENUE STREAMS THAT DO NOT
work of ODI and its members across the entire
ecosystem. Tickets to the summit are available RELY ON RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
to the public, and hundreds of people and or-
ganizations attend and participate. In 2014, OF CONTENT, DATA, OR CODE.
there were four thematic tracks and over 750
attendees.
In addition to memberships and training, During their early years, ODI wanted to focus
ODI provides advisory services to help with solely on the United Kingdom. But in their first
technical-data support, technology develop- year, large delegations of government visitors
ment, change management, policies, and oth- from over fifty countries wanted to learn more
er areas. ODI has advised large commercial about the UK government’s open-data practic-
organizations, small businesses, and interna- es and how ODI saw that translating into eco-
tional governments; the focus at the moment nomic value. They were contracted as a service
is on government, but ODI is working to shift provider to international governments, which
more toward commercial organizations. prompted a need to set up international ODI
On the commercial side, the following value “nodes.”
propositions seem to resonate: Nodes are franchises of the ODI at a region-
al or city level. Hosted by existing (for-profit or
• Data-driven insights. Businesses need data not-for-profit) organizations, they operate lo-
from outside their business to get more cally but are part of the global network. Each
insight. Businesses can generate value and ODI node adopts the charter, a set of guiding
more effectively pursue their own goals if principles and rules under which ODI oper-
they open up their own data too. Big data ates. They develop and deliver training, con-
is a hot topic. nect people and businesses through member-
ship and events, and communicate open-data
• Open innovation. Many large-scale enter- stories from their part of the world. There are
prises are aware they don’t innovate very twenty-seven different nodes across nineteen
well. One way they can innovate is to open countries. ODI nodes are charged a small fee
up their data. ODI encourages them to do to be part of the network and to use the brand.
so even if it exposes problems and chal- ODI also runs programs to help start-ups in
lenges. The key is to invite other people to the UK and across Europe develop a sustain-
help while still maintaining organizational able business around open data, offering men-
autonomy. toring, advice, training, and even office space.3
A big part of ODI’s business model revolves
• Corporate social responsibility. While this around community building. Memberships,
resonates with businesses, ODI cautions training, summits, consulting services, nodes,
against having it be the sole reason for and start-up programs create an ever-growing
making data open. If a business is just network of open-data users and leaders. (In
thinking about open data as a way to be fact, ODI even operates something called an
transparent and accountable, they can Open Data Leaders Network.) For ODI, com-
miss out on efficiencies and opportunities. munity is key to success. They devote signifi-
cant time and effort to build it, not just online
but through face-to-face events.
Made With Creative Commons 97
ODI has created an online tool that organi- dicators. Here are a few metrics as of April 27,
zations can use to assess the legal, practical, 2016:
technical, and social aspects of their open data.
If it is of high quality, the organization can earn • Total amount of cash investments unlocked
ODI’s Open Data Certificate, a globally recog- in direct investments in ODI, competition
nized mark that signals that their open data is funding, direct contracts, and partner-
useful, reliable, accessible, discoverable, and ships, and income that ODI nodes and ODI
supported.4 start-ups have generated since joining the
Separate from commercial activities, the ODI program: £44.5 million
ODI generates funding through research
grants. Research includes looking at evidence • Total number of active members and
on the impact of open data, development of nodes across the globe: 1,350
open-data tools and standards, and how to
deploy open data at scale. • Total sales since ODI began: £7.44 million
• Total number of unique people reached
since ODI began, in person and online: 2.2
Creative Commons 4.0 licenses cover database million
rights and ODI recommends CC BY, CC BY-SA,
and CC0 for data releases. ODI encourages • Total Open Data Certificates created:
publishers of data to use Creative Commons 151,000
licenses rather than creating new “open licens-
es” of their own. • Total number of people trained by ODI and
For ODI, open is at the heart of what they do. its nodes since ODI began: 5,0805
They also release any software code they pro-
duce under open-source-software licenses,
and publications and reports under CC BY or Web links
CC BY-SA licenses. ODI’s mission is to connect 1 e642e8368e3bf8d5526e-464b4b70b-
and equip people around the world so they 4554c1a79566214d402739e.r6.cf3
can innovate with data. Disseminating stories, .rackcdn.com/odi-business-plan-may
research, guidance, and code under an open li- -release.pdf
cense is essential for achieving that mission. It 2 directory.theodi.org/members
also demonstrates that it is perfectly possible 3 theodi.org/odi-startup-programme;
to generate sustainable revenue streams that theodi.org/open-data-incubator-for
do not rely on restrictive licensing of content, -europe
data, or code. People pay to have ODI experts 4 certificates.theodi.org
provide training to them, not for the content 5 dashboards.theodi.org/company/all
of the training; people pay for the advice ODI
gives them, not for the methodologies they
use. Producing open content, data, and source
code helps establish credibility and creates
leads for the paid services that they offer. Ac-
cording to Jeni, “The biggest lesson we have
learned is that it is completely possible to be
open, get customers, and make money.”
To serve as evidence of a successful open
business model and return on investment, ODI
has a public dashboard of key performance in-
98 Made With Creative Commons
OPENDESK
Opendesk is a for-profit company offering an www.opendesk.cc
online platform that connects furniture de-
signers around the world with customers and Revenue model: charging a transaction fee
local makers who bring the designs to life.
Founded in 2014 in the UK.
Interview date: November 4, 2015
Interviewees: Nick Ierodiaconou and Joni Steiner, cofounders
Profile written by Paul Stacey
Opendesk is an online platform that connects the start of the idea for Opendesk. The idea
furniture designers around the world not for Wikihouse—another open project dedicat-
just with customers but also with local reg- ed to accessible housing for all—started as dis-
istered makers who bring the designs to life. cussions around the same table. The two proj-
Opendesk and the designer receive a portion ects ultimately went on separate paths, with
of every sale that is made by a maker. Wikihouse becoming a nonprofit foundation
Cofounders Nick Ierodiaconou and Joni and Opendesk a for-profit company.
Steiner studied and worked as architects to-
gether. They also made goods. Their first client
was Mint Digital, who had an interest in open
licensing. Nick and Joni were exploring digital When Nick and Joni set out to create Opendesk,
fabrication, and Mint’s interest in open licens- there were a lot of questions about the viabil-
ing got them to thinking how the open-source ity of distributed manufacturing. No one was
world may interact and apply to physical doing it in a way that was even close to realistic
goods. They sought to design something for or competitive. The design community had the
their client that was also reproducible. As they intent, but fulfilling this vision was still a long
put it, they decided to “ship the recipe, but not way away.
the goods.” They created the design using soft- And now this sector is emerging, and Nick
ware, put it under an open license, and had it and Joni are highly interested in the commer-
manufactured locally near the client. This was cialization aspects of it. As part of coming up
Made With Creative Commons 99
with a business model, they began investigat- from Opendesk, or from a registered maker in
ing intellectual property and licensing options. Opendesk’s network, for on-demand personal
It was a thorny space, especially for designs. fabrication. The network of Opendesk makers
Just what aspect of a design is copyrightable? currently is made up of those who do digital
What is patentable? How can allowing for fabrication using a computer-controlled CNC
digital sharing and distribution be balanced (Computer Numeric Control) machining device
against the designer’s desire to still hold own- that cuts shapes out of wooden sheets accord-
ership? In the end, they decided there was no ing to the specifications in the design file.
need to reinvent the wheel and settled on us- Makers benefit from being part of
ing Creative Commons. Opendesk’s network. Making furniture for
When designing the Opendesk system, local customers is paid work, and Opendesk
they had two goals. They wanted anyone, any- generates business for them. Joni said, “Find-
where in the world, to be able to download de- ing a whole network and community of makers
signs so that they could be made locally, and was pretty easy because we built a site where
they wanted a viable model that benefited people could write in about their capabilities.
designers when their designs were sold. Com- Building the community by learning from the
ing up with a business model was going to be maker community is how we have moved for-
complex. ward.” Opendesk now has relationships with
They gave a lot of thought to three an- hundreds of makers in countries all around
gles—the potential for social sharing, allowing the world.2
designers to choose their license, and the im-
pact these choices would have on the business
model.
In support of social sharing, Opendesk ac- The makers are a critical part of the Opendesk
tively advocates for (but doesn’t demand) open business model. Their model builds off the
licensing. And Nick and Joni are agnostic about makers’ quotes. Here’s how it’s expressed on
which Creative Commons license is used; it’s Opendesk’s website:
up to the designer. They can be proprietary
or choose from the full suite of Creative Com- When customers buy an Opendesk product di-
mons licenses, deciding for themselves how rectly from a registered maker, they pay:
open or closed they want to be.
For the most part, designers love the idea • the manufacturing cost as set by the maker
of sharing content. They understand that you (this covers material and labour costs for
get positive feedback when you’re attributed, the product to be manufactured and any
what Nick and Joni called “reputational glow.” extra assembly costs charged by the mak-
And Opendesk does an awesome job profiling er)
the designers.1
While designers are largely OK with person- • a design fee for the designer (a design fee
al sharing, there is a concern that someone will that is paid to the designer every time their
take the design and manufacture the furniture design is used)
in bulk, with the designer not getting any ben-
efits. So most Opendesk designers choose the • a percentage fee to the Opendesk platform
Attribution-NonCommercial license (CC BY- (this supports the infrastructure and ongo-
NC). ing development of the platform that helps
Anyone can download a design and make us build out our marketplace)
it themselves, provided it’s for noncommer-
cial use — and there have been many, many
downloads. Or users can buy the product
100 Made With Creative Commons
• a percentage fee to the channel through • platform fee: 12 percent of the manufac-
which the sale is made (at the moment this turing cost
is Opendesk, but in the future we aim to
open this up to third-party sellers who can • channel fee: 18 percent of the manufactur-
sell Opendesk products through their own ing cost
channels—this covers sales and marketing
fees for the relevant channel) • sales tax: as applicable (depends on prod-
uct and location)
• a local delivery service charge (the delivery
is typically charged by the maker, but in Opendesk shares revenue with their com-
some cases may be paid to a third-party munity of designers. According to Nick and Joni,
delivery partner) a typical designer fee is around 2.5 percent, so
Opendesk’s 8 percent is more generous, and
• charges for any additional services the cus- providing a higher value to the designer.
tomer chooses, such as on-site assembly The Opendesk website features stories of
(additional services are discretionary—in designers and makers. Denis Fuzii published
many cases makers will be happy to quote the design for the Valovi Chair from his studio
for assembly on-site and designers may in São Paulo. His designs have been down-
offer bespoke design options) loaded over five thousand times in ninety-five
countries. I.J. CNC Services is Ian Jinks, a pro-
• local sales taxes (variable by customer and fessional maker based in the United Kingdom.
maker location)3 Opendesk now makes up a large proportion of
his business.
They then go into detail how makers’ quotes
are created:
When a customer wants to buy an Opendesk . . . To manage resources and remain effective,
they are provided with a transparent break- Opendesk has so far focused on a very nar-
down of fees including the manufacturing row niche—primarily office furniture of a cer-
cost, design fee, Opendesk platform fee and tain simple aesthetic, which uses only one
channel fees. If a customer opts to buy by get- type of material and one manufacturing tech-
ting in touch directly with a registered local nique. This allows them to be more strategic
maker using a downloaded Opendesk file, the and more disruptive in the market, by getting
maker is responsible for ensuring the design things to market quickly with competitive pric-
fee, Opendesk platform fee and channel fees es. It also reflects their vision of creating repro-
are included in any quote at the time of sale. ducible and functional pieces.
Percentage fees are always based on the un- On their website, Opendesk describes what
derlying manufacturing cost and are typically they do as “open making”: “Designers get a
apportioned as follows: global distribution channel. Makers get prof-
itable jobs and new customers. You get de-
• manufacturing cost: fabrication, finishing signer products without the designer price
and any other costs as set by the maker tag, a more social, eco-friendly alternative to
(excluding any services like delivery or on- mass-production and an affordable way to
site assembly) buy custom-made products.”
• design fee: 8 percent of the manufacturing
cost
Made With Creative Commons 101
Nick and Joni say that customers like the Opendesk established a set of principles for
fact that the furniture has a known prove- what their community considers commercial
nance. People really like that their furniture and noncommercial use. Their website states:
was designed by a certain international de-
signer but was made by a maker in their local It is unambiguously commercial use when any-
community; it’s a great story to tell. It certainly one:
sets apart Opendesk furniture from the usual
mass-produced items from a store. • charges a fee or makes a profit when mak-
ing an Opendesk
• sells (or bases a commercial service on) an
Opendesk
YOU GET DESIGNER PRODUCTS
It follows from this that noncommercial use is
WITHOUT THE DESIGNER PRICE when you make an Opendesk yourself, with
no intention to gain commercial advantage or
TAG, A MORE SOCIAL, ECO- monetary compensation. For example, these
qualify as noncommercial:
FRIENDLY ALTERNATIVE TO
• you are an individual with your own CNC
MASSPRODUCTION, AND AN machine, or access to a shared CNC ma-
chine, and will personally cut and make a
AFFORDABLE WAY TO BUY few pieces of furniture yourself
CUSTOM-MADE PRODUCTS. • you are a student (or teacher) and you use
the design files for educational purposes
or training (and do not intend to sell the
Nick and Joni are taking a community-based resulting pieces)
approach to define and evolve Opendesk and
the “open making” business model. They’re • you work for a charity and get furniture cut
engaging thought leaders and practitioners by volunteers, or by employees at a fab lab
to define this new movement. They have a or maker space
separate Open Making site, which includes a
manifesto, a field guide, and an invitation to Whether or not people technically are doing
get involved in the Open Making community.4 things that implicate IP, Nick and Joni have
People can submit ideas and discuss the prin- found that people tend to comply with the
ciples and business practices they’d like to see wishes of creators out of a sense of fairness.
used. They have found that behavioral economics
Nick and Joni talked a lot with us about in- can replace some of the thorny legal issues. In
tellectual property (IP) and commercializa- their business model, Nick and Joni are trying
tion. Many of their designers fear the idea to suspend the focus on IP and build an open
that someone could take one of their design business model that works for all stakehold-
files and make and sell infinite number of ers—designers, channels, manufacturers, and
pieces of furniture with it. As a consequence, customers. For them, the value Opendesk gen-
most Opendesk designers choose the Attribu- erates hangs off “open,” not IP.
tion-NonCommercial license (CC BY-NC).
102 Made With Creative Commons
The mission of Opendesk is about relocaliz-
ing manufacturing, which changes the way we
think about how goods are made. Commercial-
ization is integral to their mission, and they’ve
begun to focus on success metrics that track
how many makers and designers are engaged
through Opendesk in revenue-making work.
As a global platform for local making,
Opendesk’s business model has been built on
honesty, transparency, and inclusivity. As Nick
and Joni describe it, they put ideas out there
that get traction and then have faith in people.
Web links
1 www.opendesk.cc/designers
2 www.opendesk.cc/open-making/makers/
3 www.opendesk.cc/open-making/join
4 openmaking.is
Made With Creative Commons 103
104 Made With Creative Commons
OPENSTAX
OpenStax is a nonprofit that provides free, www.openstaxcollege.org
openly licensed textbooks for high-enroll-
ment introductory college courses and Ad- Revenue model: grant funding, charging for
vanced Placement courses. Founded in 2012 custom services, charging for physical copies
in the U.S. (textbook sales)
Interview date: December 16, 2015
Interviewee: David Harris, editor-in-chief
Profile written by Paul Stacey
OpenStax is an extension of a program called nexions. A year and a half later, Connexions
Connexions, which was started in 1999 by received a grant to help grow the use of OER
Dr. Richard Baraniuk, the Victor E. Cameron so that it could meet the needs of students
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engi- who couldn’t afford textbooks. David came
neering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. on board to spearhead this effort. Connexions
Frustrated by the limitations of traditional became OpenStax CNX; the program to create
textbooks and courses, Dr. Baraniuk wanted open textbooks became OpenStax College,
to provide authors and learners a way to share now simply called OpenStax.
and freely adapt educational materials such David brought with him a deep understand-
as courses, books, and reports. Today, Con- ing of the best practices of publishing along
nexions (now called OpenStax CNX) is one of with where publishers have inefficiencies. In
the world’s best libraries of customizable ed- David’s view, peer review and high standards
ucational materials, all licensed with Creative for quality are critically important if you want
Commons and available to anyone, anywhere, to scale easily. Books have to have logical scope
anytime—for free. and sequence, they have to exist as a whole
In 2008, while in a senior leadership role and not in pieces, and they have to be easy to
at WebAssign and looking at ways to reduce find. The working hypothesis for the launch
the risk that came with relying on publishers, of OpenStax was to professionally produce a
David Harris began investigating open edu- turnkey textbook by investing effort up front,
cational resources (OER) and discovered Con- with the expectation that this would lead to
Made With Creative Commons 105
rapid growth through easy downstream adop- Unlike traditional publishers’ monolithic ap-
tions by faculty and students. proach of controlling intellectual property, dis-
In 2012, OpenStax College launched as a tribution, and so many other aspects, Open-
nonprofit with the aim of producing high-qual- Stax has adopted a model that embraces open
ity, peer-reviewed full-color textbooks that licensing and relies on an extensive network of
would be available for free for the twenty-five partners.
most heavily attended college courses in the
nation. Today they are fast approaching that
number. There is data that proves the success
of their original hypothesis on how many stu- Up-front funding of a professionally produced
dents they could help and how much money all-color turnkey textbook is expensive. For
they could help save.1 Professionally produced this part of their model, OpenStax relies on
content scales rapidly. All with no sales force! philanthropy. They have initially been funded
OpenStax textbooks are all Attribution (CC by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,
BY) licensed, and each textbook is available as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Bill
a PDF, an e-book, or web pages. Those who and Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million
want a physical copy can buy one for an af- Minds Foundation, the Maxfield Foundation,
fordable price. Given the cost of education and the Calvin K. Kazanjian Foundation, and Rice
student debt in North America, free or very University. To develop additional titles and
low-cost textbooks are very appealing. Open- supporting technology is probably still going
Stax encourages students to talk to their pro- to require philanthropic investment.
fessor and librarians about these textbooks However, ongoing operations will not rely
and to advocate for their use. on foundation grants but instead on funds
received through an ecosystem of over forty
partners, whereby a partner takes core con-
tent from OpenStax and adds features that
Teachers are invited to try out a single chap- it can create revenue from. For example, We-
ter from one of the textbooks with students. bAssign, an online homework and assessment
If that goes well, they’re encouraged to adopt tool, takes the physics book and adds algo-
the entire book. They can simply paste a URL rithmically generated physics problems, with
into their course syllabus, for free and unlimit- problem-specific feedback, detailed solutions,
ed access. And with the CC BY license, teachers and tutorial support. WebAssign resources are
are free to delete chapters, make changes, and available to students for a fee.
customize any book to fit their needs. Another example is Odigia, who has turned
Any teacher can post corrections, suggest OpenStax books into interactive learning ex-
examples for difficult concepts, or volunteer periences and created additional tools to
as an editor or author. As many teachers also measure and promote student engagement.
want supplemental material to accompany a Odigia licenses its learning platform to institu-
textbook, OpenStax also provides slide pre- tions. Partners like Odigia and WebAssign give
sentations, test banks, answer keys, and so on. a percentage of the revenue they earn back to
Institutions can stand out by offering stu- OpenStax, as mission-support fees. OpenStax
dents a lower-cost education through the use has already published revisions of their titles,
of OpenStax textbooks; there’s even a text- such as Introduction to Sociology 2e, using these
book-savings calculator they can use to see funds.
how much students would save. OpenStax In David’s view, this approach lets the mar-
keeps a running list of institutions that have ket operate at peak efficiency. OpenStax’s
adopted their textbooks.2 partners don’t have to worry about developing
textbook content, freeing them up from those
106 Made With Creative Commons
development costs and letting them focus on the expensive behavior of excessive returns
what they do best. With OpenStax textbooks by having a no-returns policy. This is working
available at no cost, they can provide their well, since the sell-through of their print titles
services at a lower cost—not free, but still sav- is virtually a hundred percent.
ing students money. OpenStax benefits not
only by receiving mission-support fees but
through free publicity and marketing. Open-
Stax doesn’t have a sales force; partners are David thinks of the OpenStax model as “OER
out there showcasing their materials. 2.0.” So what is OER 1.0? Historically in the OER
OpenStax’s cost of sales to acquire a single field, many OER initiatives have been locally
student is very, very low and is a fraction of funded by institutions or government min-
what traditional players in the market face. istries. In David’s view, this results in content
This year, Tyton Partners is actually evaluating that has high local value but is infrequently ad-
the costs of sales for an OER effort like Open- opted nationally. It’s therefore difficult to show
Stax in comparison with incumbents. David payback over a time scale that is reasonable.
looks forward to sharing these findings with OER 2.0 is about OER intended to be used
the community. and adopted on a national level right from the
start. This requires a bigger investment up
front but pays off through wide geographic
MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR EVERY adoption. The OER 2.0 process for OpenStax
involves two development models. The first is
STUDENT WHO WANTS ACCESS TO what David calls the acquisition model, where
OpenStax purchases the rights from a pub-
EDUCATION TO GET IT. lisher or author for an already published book
and then extensively revises it. The OpenStax
physics textbook, for example, was licensed
While OpenStax books are available online from an author after the publisher released
for free, many students still want a print copy. the rights back to the authors. The second
Through a partnership with a print and courier model is to develop a book from scratch, a
company, OpenStax offers a complete solution good example being their biology book.
that scales. OpenStax sells tens of thousands The process is similar for both models. First
of print books. The price of an OpenStax so- they look at the scope and sequence of exist-
ciology textbook is about twenty-eight dollars, ing textbooks. They ask questions like what
a fraction of what sociology textbooks usually does the customer need? Where are students
cost. OpenStax keeps the prices low but does having challenges? Then they identify poten-
aim to earn a small margin on each book sold, tial authors and put them through a rigorous
which also contributes to ongoing operations. evaluation—only one in ten authors make it
Campus-based bookstores are part of the through. OpenStax selects a team of authors
OpenStax solution. OpenStax collaborates who come together to develop a template for
with NACSCORP (the National Association of a chapter and collectively write the first draft
College Stores Corporation) to provide print (or revise it, in the acquisitions model). (Open-
versions of their textbooks in the stores. While Stax doesn’t do books with just a single author
the overall cost of the textbook is significant- as David says it risks the project going longer
ly less than a traditional textbook, bookstores than scheduled.) The draft is peer-reviewed
can still make a profit on sales. Sometimes stu- with no less than three reviewers per chap-
dents take the savings they have from the low- ter. A second draft is generated, with artists
er-priced book and use it to buy other things in producing illustrations and visuals to go along
the bookstore. And OpenStax is trying to break with the text. The book is then copyedited to
Made With Creative Commons 107
ensure grammatical correctness and a singu- • Money saved for students: $155 million
lar voice. Finally, it goes into production and
through a final proofread. The whole process • Money saved for students in the 2016/17
is very time-consuming. academic year: $77 million
All the people involved in this process are
paid. OpenStax does not rely on volunteers. • Schools that have used OpenStax: 2,668
Writers, reviewers, illustrators, and editors (This number reflects all institutions using
are all paid an up-front fee—OpenStax does at least one OpenStax textbook. Out of
not use a royalty model. A best-selling author 2,668 schools, 517 are two-year colleges,
might make more money under the tradition- 835 four-year colleges and universities, and
al publishing model, but that is only maybe 5 344 colleges and universities outside the
percent of all authors. From David’s perspec- U.S.)
tive, 95 percent of all authors do better under
the OER 2.0 model, as there is no risk to them While OpenStax has to date been focused
and they earn all the money up front. on the United States, there is overseas adop-
tion especially in the science, technology, en-
gineering, and math (STEM) fields. Large scale
adoption in the United States is seen as a nec-
David thinks of the Attribution license (CC BY) essary precursor to international interest.
as the “innovation license.” It’s core to the mis- OpenStax has primarily focused on intro-
sion of OpenStax, letting people use their text- ductory-level college courses where there is
books in innovative ways without having to ask high enrollment, but they are starting to think
for permission. It frees up the whole market about verticals—a broad offering for a specific
and has been central to OpenStax being able group or need. David thinks it would be ter-
to bring on partners. OpenStax sees a lot of rific if OpenStax could provide access to free
customization of their materials. By enabling textbooks through the entire curriculum of a
frictionless remixing, CC BY gives teachers nursing degree, for example.
control and academic freedom. Finally, for OpenStax success is not just
Using CC BY is also a good example of using about the adoption of their textbooks and stu-
strategies that traditional publishers can’t. Tra- dent savings. There is a human aspect to the
ditional publishers rely on copyright to prevent work that is hard to quantify but incredibly im-
others from making copies and heavily invest portant. They get emails from students saying
in digital rights management to ensure their how OpenStax saved them from making dif-
books aren’t shared. By using CC BY, OpenStax ficult choices like buying food or a textbook.
avoids having to deal with digital rights man- OpenStax would also like to assess the impact
agement and its costs. OpenStax books can their books have on learning efficiency, per-
be copied and shared over and over again. CC sistence, and completion. By building an open
BY changes the rules of engagement and takes business model based on Creative Commons,
advantage of traditional market inefficiencies. OpenStax is making it possible for every stu-
As of September 16, 2016, OpenStax has dent who wants access to education to get it.
achieved some impressive results. From the
OpenStax at a Glance fact sheet from their re- Web links
cent press kit: 1 news.rice.edu/files/2016/01/0119
-OPENSTAX-2016Infographic-lg-1tahxiu.jpg
• Books published: 23 2 openstax.org/adopters
• Students who have used OpenStax: 1.6
million
108 Made With Creative Commons
AMANDA
PALMER
Amanda Palmer is a musician, artist, and writ- Revenue model: crowdfunding (subscription-
er. Based in the U.S. based), pay-what-you-want, charging for
physical copies (book and album sales), charg-
amandapalmer.net ing for in-person version (performances),
selling merchandise
Interview date: December 15, 2015
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
Since the beginning of her career, Amanda fused artists wondering how to make money
Palmer has been on what she calls a “journey to buy food so we can make more art.”
with no roadmap,” continually experimenting
to find new ways to sustain her creative work. 1
In her best-selling book, The Art of Asking,
Amanda articulates exactly what she has been Amanda began her artistic career as a street
and continues to strive for—“the ideal sweet performer. She would dress up in an antique
spot . . . in which the artist can share freely and wedding gown, paint her face white, stand on
directly feel the reverberations of their artistic a stack of milk crates, and hand out flowers
gifts to the community, and make a living do- to strangers as part of a silent dramatic per-
ing that.” formance. She collected money in a hat. Most
While she seems to have successfully found people walked by her without stopping, but an
that sweet spot for herself, Amanda is the first essential few stopped to watch and drop some
to acknowledge there is no silver bullet. She money into her hat to show their appreciation.
thinks the digital age is both an exciting and Rather than dwelling on the majority of peo-
frustrating time for creators. “On the one hand, ple who ignored her, she felt thankful for those
we have this beautiful shareability,” Amanda who stopped. “All I needed was . . . some peo-
said. “On the other, you’ve got a bunch of con- ple,” she wrote in her book. “Enough people.
Made With Creative Commons 109
Enough to make it worth coming back the next she discovered Creative Commons. Amanda
day, enough people to help me make rent and says the Dresden Dolls used to get ten emails
put food on the table. Enough so I could keep per week from fans asking if they could use
making art.” their music for different projects. They said
Amanda has come a long way from her yes to all of the requests, as long as it wasn’t
street-performing days, but her career re- for a completely for-profit venture. At the time,
mains dominated by that same sentiment— they used a short-form agreement written by
finding ways to reach “her crowd” and feeling Amanda herself. “I made everyone sign that
gratitude when she does. With her band the contract so at least I wouldn’t be leaving the
Dresden Dolls, Amanda tried the traditional band vulnerable to someone later going on
path of signing with a record label. It didn’t and putting our music in a Camel cigarette ad,”
take for a variety of reasons, but one of them Amanda said. Once she discovered Creative
was that the label had absolutely no interest in Commons, adopting the licenses was an easy
Amanda’s view of success. They wanted hits, decision because it gave them a more formal,
but making music for the masses was never standardized way of doing what they had been
what Amanda and the Dresden Dolls set out doing all along. The NonCommercial licenses
to do. were a natural fit.
After leaving the record label in 2008, she
began experimenting with different ways to
make a living. She released music directly to
the public without involving a middle man, re- Amanda embraces the way her fans share and
leasing digital files on a “pay what you want” build upon her music. In The Art of Asking, she
basis and selling CDs and vinyl. She also made wrote that some of her fans’ unofficial videos
money from live performances and merchan- using her music surpass the official videos
dise sales. Eventually, in 2012 she decided to in number of views on YouTube. Rather than
try her hand at the sort of crowdfunding we seeing this sort of thing as competition, Aman-
know so well today. Her Kickstarter project da celebrates it. “We got into this because we
started with a goal of $100,000, and she made wanted to share the joy of music,” she said.
$1.2 million. It remains one of the most suc- This is symbolic of how nearly everything
cessful Kickstarter projects of all time. she does in her career is motivated by a desire
Today, Amanda has switched gears away to connect with her fans. At the start of her ca-
from crowdfunding for specific projects to in- reer, she and the band would throw concerts
stead getting consistent financial support from at house parties. As the gatherings grew, the
her fan base on Patreon, a crowdfunding site line between fans and friends was complete-
that allows artists to get recurring donations ly blurred. “Not only did most our early fans
from fans. More than eight thousand people know where I lived and where we practiced,
have signed up to support her so she can cre- but most of them had also been in my kitch-
ate music, art, and any other creative “thing” en,” Amanda wrote in The Art of Asking.
that she is inspired to make. The recurring Even though her fan base is now huge and
pledges are made on a “per thing” basis. All of global, she continues to seek this sort of hu-
the content she makes is made freely available man connection with her fans. She seeks out
under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareA- face-to-face contact with her fans every chance
like license (CC BY-NC-SA). she can get. Her hugely successful Kickstart-
Making her music and art available under er featured fifty concerts at house parties for
Creative Commons licensing undoubtedly lim- backers. She spends hours in the signing line
its her options for how she makes a living. But after shows. It helps that Amanda has the kind
sharing her work has been part of her model of dynamic, engaging personality that instant-
since the beginning of her career, even before ly draws people to her, but a big component of
110 Made With Creative Commons
her ability to connect with people is her will- IT SOUNDS SO CORNY, BUT MY
ingness to listen. “Listening fast and caring im-
mediately is a skill unto itself,” Amanda wrote. EXPERIENCE IN FORTY YEARS ON
Another part of the connection fans feel
with Amanda is how much they know about THIS PLANET HAS POINTED ME
her life. Rather than trying to craft a public per-
sona or image, she essentially lives her life as TO AN OBVIOUS TRUTH—THAT
an open book. She has written openly about
incredibly personal events in her life, and she CONNECTION WITH HUMAN
isn’t afraid to be vulnerable. Having that kind
of trust in her fans—the trust it takes to be BEINGS FEELS SO MUCH BETTER
truly honest—begets trust from her fans in re-
turn. When she meets fans for the first time af- AND MORE FULFILLING THAN
ter a show, they can legitimately feel like they
know her. APPROACHING ART THROUGH A
“With social media, we’re so concerned with
the picture looking palatable and consumable CAPITALIST LENS. THERE IS NO
that we forget that being human and show-
ing the flaws and exposing the vulnerability MORE SATISFYING END GOAL
actually create a deeper connection than just
looking fantastic,” Amanda said. “Everything in THAN HAVING SOMEONE TELL
our culture is telling us otherwise. But my ex-
perience has shown me that the risk of making YOU THAT WHAT YOU DO IS
yourself vulnerable is almost always worth it.”
Not only does she disclose intimate details GENUINELY OF VALUE TO THEM.
of her life to them, she sleeps on their couch-
es, listens to their stories, cries with them. In
short, she treats her fans like friends in nearly People who feel personally invested in your
every possible way, even when they are com- success.
plete strangers. This mentality—that fans “When you openly, radically trust people,
are friends—is completely intertwined with they not only take care of you, they become
Amanda’s success as an artist. It is also inter- your allies, your family,” she wrote. There real-
twined with her use of Creative Commons li- ly is a feeling of solidarity within her core fan
censes. Because that is what you do with your base. From the beginning, Amanda and her
friends—you share. band encouraged people to dress up for their
shows. They consciously cultivated a feeling of
belonging to their “weird little family.”
This sort of intimacy with fans is not possi-
After years of investing time and energy into ble or even desirable for every creator. “I don’t
building trust with her fans, she has a strong take for granted that I happen to be the type
enough relationship with them to ask for sup- of person who loves cavorting with strangers,”
port—through pay-what-you-want donations, Amanda said. “I recognize that it’s not neces-
Kickstarter, Patreon, or even asking them to sarily everyone’s idea of a good time. Every-
lend a hand at a concert. As Amanda explains one does it differently. Replicating what I have
it, crowdfunding (which is really what all of done won’t work for others if it isn’t joyful to
these different things are) is about asking for them. It’s about finding a way to channel ener-
support from people who know and trust you. gy in a way that is joyful to you.”
Made With Creative Commons 111
Yet while Amanda joyfully interacts with her
fans and involves them in her work as much as
possible, she does keep one job primarily to
herself—writing the music. She loves the cre-
ativity with which her fans use and adapt her
work, but she intentionally does not involve
them at the first stage of creating her artistic
work. And, of course, the songs and music are
what initially draw people to Amanda Palmer.
It is only once she has connected to people
through her music that she can then begin to
build ties with them on a more personal level,
both in person and online. In her book, Aman-
da describes it as casting a net. It starts with
the art and then the bond strengthens with
human connection.
For Amanda, the entire point of being an art-
ist is to establish and maintain this connection.
“It sounds so corny,” she said, “but my experi-
ence in forty years on this planet has pointed
me to an obvious truth—that connection with
human beings feels so much better and more
fulfilling than approaching art through a capi-
talist lens. There is no more satisfying end goal
than having someone tell you that what you do
is genuinely of value to them.”
As she explains it, when a fan gives her a
ten-dollar bill, usually what they are saying is
that the money symbolizes some deeper value
the music provided them. For Amanda, art is
not just a product; it’s a relationship. Viewed
from this lens, what Amanda does today is not
that different from what she did as a young
street performer. She shares her music and
other artistic gifts. She shares herself. And
then rather than forcing people to help her,
she lets them.
Web link
1 http://www.forbes.com/sites
/zackomalleygreenburg/2015/04/16
/amanda-palmer-uncut-the
-kickstarter-queen-on-spotify
-patreon-and-taylor-swift
/#44e20ce46d67
112 Made With Creative Commons
PLOS
(PUBLIC LIBRARY
OF SCIENCE)
PLOS (Public Library of Science) is a nonprofit plos.org
that publishes a library of academic journals
and other scientific literature. Founded in Revenue model: charging content creators
2000 in the U.S. an author processing charge to be featured in
the journal
Interview date: March 7, 2016
Interviewee: Louise Page, publisher
Profile written by Paul Stacey
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) began in promised. With start-up grant support from
2000 when three leading scientists—Harold E. the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation,
Varmus, Patrick O. Brown, and Michael Eisen— PLOS was launched to provide new open-ac-
started an online petition. They were calling cess journals for biomedicine, with research
for scientists to stop submitting papers to articles being released under Attribution (CC
journals that didn’t make the full text of their BY) licenses.
papers freely available immediately or within Traditionally, academic publishing begins
six months. Although tens of thousands signed with an author submitting a manuscript to a
the petition, most did not follow through. In publisher. After in-house technical and ethi-
August 2001, Patrick and Michael announced cal considerations, the article is then peer-re-
that they would start their own nonprofit pub- viewed to determine if the quality of the work
lishing operation to do just what the petition is acceptable for publishing. Once accepted,
Made With Creative Commons 113
the publisher takes the article through the and support for discovery. Fees are per article
process of copyediting, typesetting, and even- and are billed upon acceptance for publish-
tual publishing in a print or online publication. ing. There are no additional charges based on
Traditional journal publishers recover costs word length, figures, or other elements.
and earn profit by charging a subscription fee Calculating the article-processing charge
to libraries or an access fee to users wanting to involves taking all the costs associated with
read the journal or article. publishing the journal and determining a cost
For Louise Page, the current publisher of per article that collectively recovers costs. For
PLOS, this traditional model results in inequity. PLOS’s journals in biology, medicine, genetics,
Access is restricted to those who can pay. Most computational biology, neglected tropical dis-
research is funded through government-ap- eases, and pathogens, the article-processing
pointed agencies, that is, with public funds. It’s charge ranges from $2,250 to $2,900. Arti-
unjust that the public who funded the research cle-publication charges for PLOS ONE, a journal
would be required to pay again to access the started in 2006, are just under $1,500.
results. Not everyone can afford the ever-es- PLOS believes that lack of funds should not
calating subscription fees publishers charge, be a barrier to publication. Since its inception,
especially when library budgets are being re- PLOS has provided fee support for individuals
duced. Restricting access to the results of sci- and institutions to help authors who can’t af-
entific research slows the dissemination of this ford the article-processing charges.
research and advancement of the field. It was
time for a new model.
Louise identifies marketing as one area of
big difference between PLOS and traditional
That new model became known as open ac- journal publishers. Traditional journals have
cess. That is, free and open availability on the to invest heavily in staff, buildings, and infra-
Internet. Open-access research articles are structure to market their journal and convince
not behind a paywall and do not require a log- customers to subscribe. Restricting access
in. A key benefit of open access is that it allows to subscribers means that tools for manag-
people to freely use, copy, and distribute the ing access control are necessary. They spend
articles, as they are primarily published under millions of dollars on access-control systems,
an Attribution (CC BY) license (which only re- staff to manage them, and sales staff. With
quires the user to provide appropriate attri- PLOS’s open-access publishing, there’s no
bution). And more importantly, policy makers, need for these massive expenses; the articles
clinicians, entrepreneurs, educators, and stu- are free, open, and accessible to all upon pub-
dents around the world have free and timely lication. Additionally, traditional publishers
access to the latest research immediately on tend to spend more on marketing to libraries,
publication. who ultimately pay the subscription fees. PLOS
However, open access requires rethinking provides a better service for authors by pro-
the business model of research publication. moting their research directly to the research
Rather than charge a subscription fee to access community and giving the authors exposure.
the journal, PLOS decided to turn the model on And this encourages other authors to submit
its head and charge a publication fee, known as their work for publication.
an article-processing charge. This up-front fee, For Louise, PLOS would not exist without
generally paid by the funder of the research or the Attribution license (CC BY). This makes it
the author’s institution, covers the expenses very clear what rights are associated with the
such as editorial oversight, peer-review man- content and provides a safe way for research-
agement, journal production, online hosting, ers to make their work available while ensuring
114 Made With Creative Commons
they get recognition (appropriate attribution). peer-reviewed academic journal that is much
For PLOS, all of this aligns with how they think larger than a traditional journal, publishing
research content should be published and dis- thousands of articles per year and benefit-
seminated. ing from economies of scale. PLOS ONE has a
PLOS also has a broad open-data policy. To broad scope, covering science and medicine as
get their research paper published, PLOS au- well as social sciences and the humanities. The
thors must also make their data available in a review and editorial process is less subjective.
public repository and provide a data-availabil- Articles are accepted for publication based
ity statement. on whether they are technically sound rath-
Business-operation costs associated with er than perceived importance or relevance.
the open-access model still largely follow the This is very important in the current debate
existing publishing model. PLOS journals are about the integrity and reproducibility of re-
online only, but the editorial, peer-review, pro- search because negative or null results can
duction, typesetting, and publishing stages then be published as well, which are general-
are all the same as for a traditional publisher. ly rejected by traditional journals. PLOS ONE,
The editorial teams must be top notch. PLOS like all the PLOS journals, is online only with
has to function as well as or better than other no print version. PLOS passes on the financial
premier journals, as researchers have a choice savings accrued through economies of scale
about where to publish. to researchers and the public by lowering the
Researchers are influenced by journal article-processing charges, which are below
rankings, which reflect the place of a journal that of other journals. PLOS ONE is the biggest
within its field, the relative difficulty of being journal in the world and has really set the bar
published in that journal, and the prestige as- for publishing academic journal articles on a
sociated with it. PLOS journals rank high, even large scale. Other publishers see the value of
though they are relatively new. the PLOS ONE model and are now offering their
The promotion and tenure of researchers own multidisciplinary forums for publishing all
are partially based how many times other re- sound science.
searchers cite their articles. Louise says when
researchers want to discover and read the
work of others in their field, they go to an on-
line aggregator or search engine, and not typi- Louise outlined some other aspects of the
cally to a particular journal. The CC BY licensing research-journal business model PLOS is ex-
of PLOS research articles ensures easy access perimenting with, describing each as a kind of
for readers and generates more discovery and slider that could be adjusted to change current
citations for authors. practice.
Louise believes that open access has been One slider is time to publication. Time to
a huge success, progressing from a movement publication may shorten as journals get bet-
led by a small cadre of researchers to some- ter at providing quicker decisions to authors.
thing that is now widespread and used in some However, there is always a trade-off with scale,
form by every journal publisher. PLOS has had as the bigger the volume of articles, the more
a big impact. In 2012 to 2014, they published time the approval process inevitably takes.
more open-access articles than BioMed Cen- Peer review is another part of the process
tral, the original open-access publisher, or any- that could change. It’s possible to redefine
one else. what peer review actually is, when to review,
PLOS further disrupted the traditional jour- and what constitutes the final article for pub-
nal-publishing model by pioneering the con- lication. Louise talked about the potential to
cept of a megajournal. The PLOS ONE mega- shift to an open-review process, placing the
journal, launched in 2006, is an open-access emphasis on transparency rather than dou-
Made With Creative Commons 115
ble-blind reviews. Louise thinks we’re moving ing pushed out to readers, making the experi-
into a direction where it’s actually beneficial for ence feel like drinking from a fire hose. To help
an author to know who is reviewing their paper mitigate this, PLOS aggregates and curates
and for the reviewer to know their review will content from PLOS journals and their network
be public. An open-review process can also en- of blogs.1 It also offers something called Arti-
sure everyone gets credit; right now, credit is cle-Level Metrics, which helps users assess re-
limited to the publisher and author. search most relevant to the field itself, based
Louise says research with negative out- on indicators like usage, citations, social book-
comes is almost as important as positive re- marking and dissemination activity, media and
sults. If journals published more research blog coverage, discussions, and ratings.2 Louise
with negative outcomes, we’d learn from what believes that the journal model could evolve to
didn’t work. It could also reduce how much the provide a more friendly and interactive user
research wheel gets reinvented around the experience, including a way for readers to com-
world. municate with authors.
Another adjustable practice is the sharing of The big picture for PLOS going forward is to
articles at early preprint stages. Publication of combine and adjust these experimental prac-
research in a peer-reviewed journal can take a tices in ways that continue to improve acces-
long time because articles must undergo ex- sibility and dissemination of research, while
tensive peer review. The need to quickly circu- ensuring its integrity and reliability. The ways
late current results within a scientific communi- they interlink are complex. The process of
ty has led to a practice of distributing pre-print change and adjustment is not linear. PLOS sees
documents that have not yet undergone peer itself as a very flexible publisher interested in
review. Preprints broaden the peer-review pro- exploring all the permutations research-pub-
cess, allowing authors to receive early feedback lishing can take, with authors and readers who
from a wide group of peers, which can help are open to experimentation.
revise and prepare the article for submission.
Offsetting the advantages of preprints are au-
thor concerns over ensuring their primacy of
being first to come up with findings based on For PLOS, success is not about revenue. Suc-
their research. Other researches may see find- cess is about proving that scientific research
ings the preprint author has not yet thought of. can be communicated rapidly and economical-
However, preprints help researchers get their ly at scale, for the benefit of researchers and
discoveries out early and establish precedence. society. The CC BY license makes it possible
A big challenge is that researchers don’t have a for PLOS to publish in a way that is unfettered,
lot of time to comment on preprints. open, and fast, while ensuring that the authors
What constitutes a journal article could also get credit for their work. More than two million
change. The idea of a research article as print- scientists, scholars, and clinicians visit PLOS
ed, bound, and in a library stack is outdated. every month, with more than 135,000 quality
Digital and online open up new possibilities, articles to peruse for free.
such as a living document evolving over time, Ultimately, for PLOS, its authors, and its
inclusion of audio and video, and interactivity, readers, success is about making research dis-
like discussion and recommendations. Even coverable, available, and reproducible for the
the size of what gets published could change. advancement of science.
With these changes the current form factor for
what constitutes a research article would un- Web links
dergo transformation. 1 collections.plos.org
As journals scale up, and new journals are 2 plos.org/article-level-metrics
introduced, more and more information is be-
116 Made With Creative Commons
RIJKSMUSEUM
The Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national muse- Revenue model: grants and government
um dedicated to art and history. Founded in funding, charging for in-person version
1800 in the Netherlands (museum admission), selling merchandise
www.rijksmuseum.nl
Interview date: December 11, 2015
Interviewee: Lizzy Jongma, the data manager of the collections information department
Profile written by Paul Stacey
The Rijksmuseum, a national museum in the By the time Lizzy Jongma joined the Rijksmu-
Netherlands dedicated to art and history, has seum in 2011 as a data manager, staff were fed
been housed in its current building since 1885. up with the situation the museum was in. They
The monumental building enjoyed more than also realized that even with the new and larg-
125 years of intensive use before needing a er space, it still wouldn’t be able to show very
thorough overhaul. In 2003, the museum was much of the whole collection—eight thousand
closed for renovations. Asbestos was found of over one million works representing just 1
in the roof, and although the museum was percent. Staff began exploring ways to express
scheduled to be closed for only three to four themselves, to have something to show for all
years, renovations ended up taking ten years. of the work they had been doing. The Rijksmu-
During this time, the collection was moved to seum is primarily funded by Dutch taxpayers,
a different part of Amsterdam, which created so was there a way for the museum provide
a physical distance with the curators. Out of benefit to the public while it was closed? They
necessity, they started digitally photographing began thinking about sharing Rijksmuseum’s
the collection and creating metadata (informa- collection using information technology. And
tion about each object to put into a database). they put up a card-catalog like database of the
With the renovations going on for so long, the entire collection online.
museum became largely forgotten by the pub- It was effective but a bit boring. It was just
lic. Out of these circumstances emerged a new data. A hackathon they were invited to got
and more open model for the museum. them to start talking about events like that as
having potential. They liked the idea of inviting
people to do cool stuff with their collection.
Made With Creative Commons 117
What about giving online access to digital rep- nightmare, especially from overseas custom-
resentations of the one hundred most import- ers. The administrative costs often offset rev-
ant pieces in the Rijksmuseum collection? That enue, and income above costs was relatively
eventually led to why not put the whole collec- low. In addition, having to pay for an image of
tion online? a work in the public domain from a collection
Then, Lizzy says, Europeana came along. owned by the Dutch government (i.e., paid for
Europeana is Europe’s digital library, museum, by the public) was contentious and frustrating
and archive for cultural heritage.1 As an online for some. Lizzy says they had lots of fierce de-
portal to museum collections all across Europe, bates about what to do.
Europeana had become an important online In 2013 the Rijksmuseum changed its busi-
platform. In October 2010 Creative Commons ness model. They Creative Commons licensed
released CC0 and its public-domain mark as their highest-quality images and released
tools people could use to identify works as them online for free. Digitization still cost mon-
free of known copyright. Europeana was the ey, however; they decided to define discrete
first major adopter, using CC0 to release meta- digitization projects and find sponsors willing
data about their collection and the public do- to fund each project. This turned out to be a
main mark for millions of digital works in their successful strategy, generating high interest
collection. Lizzy says the Rijksmuseum initial- from sponsors and lower administrative effort
ly found this change in business practice a bit for the Rijksmuseum. They started out making
scary, but at the same time it stimulated even 150,000 high-quality images of their collection
more discussion on whether the Rijksmuseum available, with the goal to eventually have the
should follow suit. entire collection online.
They realized that they don’t “own” the col- Releasing these high-quality images for free
lection and couldn’t realistically monitor and reduced the number of poor-quality images
enforce compliance with the restrictive licens- that were proliferating. The high-quality image
ing terms they currently had in place. For ex- of Vermeer’s Milkmaid, for example, is down-
ample, many copies and versions of Vermeer’s loaded two to three thousand times a month.
Milkmaid (part of their collection) were already On the Internet, images from a source like the
online, many of them of very poor quality. They Rijksmuseum are more trusted, and releasing
could spend time and money policing its use, them with a Creative Commons CC0 means
but it would probably be futile and wouldn’t they can easily be found in other platforms.
make people stop using their images online. For example, Rijksmuseum images are now
They ended up thinking it’s an utter waste used in thousands of Wikipedia articles, re-
of time to hunt down people who use the Ri- ceiving ten to eleven million views per month.
jksmuseum collection. And anyway, restricting This extends Rijksmuseum’s reach far beyond
access meant the people they were frustrating the scope of its website. Sharing these imag-
the most were schoolkids. es online creates what Lizzy calls the “Mona
Lisa effect,” where a work of art becomes so
famous that people want to see it in real life by
visiting the actual museum.
In 2011 the Rijksmuseum began making their Every museum tends to be driven by the
digital photos of works known to be free of number of physical visitors. The Rijksmuseum
copyright available online, using Creative is primarily publicly funded, receiving roughly
Commons CC0 to place works in the public 70 percent of its operating budget from the
domain. A medium-resolution image was of- government. But like many museums, it must
fered for free, but a high-resolution version generate the rest of the funding through other
cost forty euros. People started paying, but means. The admission fee has long been a way
Lizzy says getting the money was frequently a
118 Made With Creative Commons
to generate revenue generation, including for RIJKSMUSEUM IMAGES ARE
the Rijksmuseum.
As museums create a digital presence for NOW USED IN THOUSANDS OF
themselves and put up digital representations
of their collection online, there’s frequently a WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES, RECEIVING
worry that it will lead to a drop in actual phys-
ical visits. For the Rijksmuseum, this has not TEN TO ELEVEN MILLION VIEWS
turned out to be the case. Lizzy told us the Ri-
jksmuseum used to get about one million vis- PER MONTH EXTENDING REACH
itors a year before closing and now gets more
than two million a year. Making the collection FAR BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THEIR
available online has generated publicity and
acts as a form of marketing. The Creative Com- OWN WEBSITE.
mons mark encourages reuse as well. When
the image is found on protest leaflets, milk ucational purposes including use for school
cartons, and children’s toys, people also see exams.
what museum the image comes from and this Some contemporary artists who have works
increases the museum’s visibility. in the Rijksmuseum collection contacted them
to ask why their works were not included in the
Rijksstudio. The answer was that contempo-
rary artists’ works are still bound by copyright.
In 2011 the Rijksmuseum received €1 million The Rijksmuseum does encourage contempo-
from the Dutch lottery to create a new web rary artists to use a Creative Commons license
presence that would be different from any oth- for their works, usually a CC BY-SA license
er museum’s. In addition to redesigning their (Attribution-ShareAlike), or a CC BY-NC (Attri-
main website to be mobile friendly and re- bution-NonCommercial) if they want to pre-
sponsive to devices like the iPad, the Rijksmu- clude commercial use. That way, their works
seum also created the Rijksstudio, where us- can be made available to the public, but within
ers and artists could use and do various things limits the artists have specified.
with the Rijksmuseum collection.2 The Rijksmuseum believes that art stim-
The Rijksstudio gives users access to over ulates entrepreneurial activity. The line be-
two hundred thousand high-quality digital tween creative and commercial can be blurry.
representations of masterworks from the col- As Lizzy says, even Rembrandt was commer-
lection. Users can zoom in to any work and cial, making his livelihood from selling his
even clip small parts of images they like. Ri- paintings. The Rijksmuseum encourages en-
jksstudio is a bit like Pinterest. You can “like” trepreneurial commercial use of the images
works and compile your personal favorites, in Rijksstudio. They’ve even partnered with
and you can share them with friends or down- the DIY marketplace Etsy to inspire people to
load them free of charge. All the images in the sell their creations. One great example you
Rijksstudio are copyright and royalty free, and can find on Etsy is a kimono designed by An-
users are encouraged to use them as they like, gie Johnson, who used an image of an elabo-
for private or even commercial purposes. rate cabinet along with an oil painting by Jan
Users have created over 276,000 Rijksstu- Asselijn called The Threatened Swan.3
dios, generating their own themed virtual In 2013 the Rijksmuseum organized their
exhibitions on a wide variety of topics rang- first high-profile design competition, known as
ing from tapestries to ugly babies and birds. the Rijksstudio Award.4 With the call to action
Sets of images have also been created for ed- Make Your Own Masterpiece, the competition
invites the public to use Rijksstudio images to
Made With Creative Commons 119
make new creative designs. A jury of renowned For the Rijksmuseum, adopting an open busi-
designers and curators selects ten finalists ness model was scary. They came up with
and three winners. The final award comes with many worst-case scenarios, imagining all kinds
a prize of €10,000. The second edition in 2015 of awful things people might do with the mu-
attracted a staggering 892 top-class entries. seum’s works. But Lizzy says those fears did
Some award winners end up with their work not come true because “ninety-nine percent of
sold through the Rijksmuseum store, such as people have respect for great art.” Many mu-
the 2014 entry featuring makeup based on a seums think they can make a lot of money by
specific color scheme of a work of art.5 The Ri- selling things related to their collection. But in
jksmuseum has been thrilled with the results. Lizzy’s experience, museums are usually bad at
Entries range from the fun to the weird to the selling things, and sometimes efforts to gener-
inspirational. The third international edition of ate a small amount of money block something
the Rijksstudio Award started in September much bigger—the real value that the collection
2016. has. For Lizzy, clinging to small amounts of rev-
For the next iteration of the Rijksstudio, the enue is being penny-wise but pound-foolish.
Rijksmuseum is considering an upload tool, for For the Rijksmuseum, a key lesson has been to
people to upload their own works of art, and never lose sight of its vision for the collection.
enhanced social elements so users can inter- Allowing access to and use of their collection
act with each other more. has generated great promotional value—far
more than the previous practice of charging
fees for access and use. Lizzy sums up their
experience: “Give away; get something in re-
Going with a more open business model gen- turn. Generosity makes people happy to join
erated lots of publicity for the Rijksmuseum. you and help out.”
They were one of the first museums to open
up their collection (that is, give free access) Web links
with high-quality images. This strategy, along 1 www.europeana.eu/portal/en
with the many improvements to the Rijksmu- 2 www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio
seum’s website, dramatically increased visits 3 www.etsy.com/ca/listing/175696771
to their website from thirty-five thousand vis- /fringe-kimono-silk-kimono-kimono-robe
its per month to three hundred thousand. 4 www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio-award;
The Rijksmuseum has been experimenting the 2014 award: www.rijksmuseum.nl
with other ways to invite the public to look at /en/rijksstudio-award-2014;
and interact with their collection. On an inter- the 2015 award: www.rijksmuseum.nl
national day celebrating animals, they ran a /en/rijksstudio-award-2015
successful bird-themed event. The museum 5 www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/rijksstudio
put together a showing of two thousand works /142328--nominees-rijksstudio-award
that featured birds and invited bird-watchers /creaties/ba595afe-452d-46bd-9c8c
to identify the birds depicted. Lizzy notes that -48dcbdd7f0a4
while museum curators know a lot about the
works in their collections, they may not know
about certain details in the paintings such as
bird species. Over eight hundred different
birds were identified, including a specific spe-
cies of crane bird that was unknown to the sci-
entific community at the time of the painting.
120 Made With Creative Commons
SHAREABLE
Shareable is an online magazine about Revenue model: grant funding, crowdfunding
sharing. Founded in 2009 in the U.S. (project-based), donations, sponsorships
www.shareable.net
Interview date: February 24, 2016
Interviewee: Neal Gorenflo, cofounder and executive editor
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
In 2013, Shareable faced an impasse. The non- patory budgeting (where citizens decide how
profit online publication had helped start a a public budget is spent), cooperatives, and
sharing movement four years prior, but over more. He wrote, “It’s not so much that collab-
time, they watched one part of the movement orative consumption is dead, it’s more that it
stray from its ideals. As giants like Uber and risks dying as it gets absorbed by the ‘Borg.’”
Airbnb gained ground, attention began to cen- Neal said their public critique of the corpo-
ter on the “sharing economy” we know now— rate sharing economy defined what Shareable
profit-driven, transactional, and loaded with was and is. He does not think the magazine
venture-capital money. Leaders of corporate would still be around had they chosen differ-
start-ups in this domain invited Shareable ently. “We would have gotten another type of
to advocate for them. The magazine faced a audience, but it would have spelled the end of
choice: ride the wave or stand on principle. us,” he said. “We are a small, mission-driven
As an organization, Shareable decided to organization. We would never have been able
draw a line in the sand. In 2013, the cofounder to weather the criticism that Airbnb and Uber
and executive editor Neal Gorenflo wrote an are getting now.”
opinion piece in the PandoDaily that charted Interestingly, impassioned supporters are
Shareable’s new critical stance on the Silicon only a small sliver of Shareable’s total au-
Valley version of the sharing economy, while dience. Most are casual readers who come
contrasting it with aspects of the real sharing across a Shareable story because it happens
economy like open-source software, partici- to align with a project or interest they have.
Made With Creative Commons 121
But choosing principles over the possibility ganization gets a chance to present stories to
of riding the coattails of the major corporate the group, and the organizations can use and
players in the sharing space saved Shareable’s promote each other’s stories. Much of the con-
credibility. Although they became detached tent created by the network is licensed with
from the corporate sharing economy, the on- Creative Commons.
line magazine became the voice of the “real All of Shareable’s original content is pub-
sharing economy” and continued to grow their lished under the Attribution license (CC BY),
audience. meaning it can be used for any purpose as long
as credit is given to Shareable. Creative Com-
mons licensing is aligned with Shareable’s vi-
sion, mission, and identity. That alone explains
Shareable is a magazine, but the content the organization’s embrace of the licenses for
they publish is a means to furthering their role their content, but Neal also believes CC licens-
as a leader and catalyst of a movement. Share- ing helps them increase their reach. “By using
able became a leader in the movement in 2009. CC licensing,” he said, “we realized we could
“At that time, there was a sharing movement reach far more people through a formal and
bubbling beneath the surface, but no one was informal network of republishers or affiliates.
connecting the dots,” Neal said. “We decided That has definitely been the case. It’s hard for
to step into that space and take on that role.” us to measure the reach of other media prop-
The small team behind the nonprofit publica- erties, but most of the outlets who republish
tion truly believed sharing could be central to our work have much bigger audiences than we
solving some of the major problems human do.”
beings face—resource inequality, social isola- In addition to their regular news and com-
tion, and global warming. mentary online, Shareable has also experi-
They have worked hard to find ways to tell mented with book publishing. In 2012, they
stories that show different metrics for success. worked with a traditional publisher to release
“We wanted to change the notion of what con- Share or Die: Voices of the Get Lost Generation
stitutes the good life,” Neal said. While they in an Age of Crisis. The CC-licensed book was
started out with a very broad focus on sharing available in print form for purchase or online
generally, today they emphasize stories about for free. To this day, the book—along with their
the physical commons like “sharing cities” (i.e., CC-licensed guide Policies for Shareable Cities—
urban areas managed in a sustainable, cooper- are two of the biggest generators of traffic on
ative way), as well as digital platforms that are their website.
run democratically. They particularly focus on In 2016, Shareable self-published a book of
how-to content that help their readers make curated Shareable stories called How to: Share,
changes in their own lives and communities. Save Money and Have Fun. The book was avail-
More than half of Shareable’s stories are able for sale, but a PDF version of the book
written by paid journalists that are contracted was available for free. Shareable plans to offer
by the magazine. “Particularly in content areas the book in upcoming fund-raising campaigns.
that are a priority for us, we really want to go This recent book is one of many fund-rais-
deep and control the quality,” Neal said. The ing experiments Shareable has conducted in
rest of the content is either contributed by recent years. Currently, Shareable is primarily
guest writers, often for free, or written by oth- funded by grants from foundations, but they
er publications from their network of content are actively moving toward a more diversified
publishers. Shareable is a member of the Post model. They have organizational sponsors and
Growth Alliance, which facilitates the sharing are working to expand their base of individual
of content and audiences among a large and donors. Ideally, they will eventually be a hun-
growing group of mostly nonprofits. Each or- dred percent funded by their audience. Neal
122 Made With Creative Commons
believes being fully community-supported will and reach far more people. Shareable has cat-
better represent their vision of the world. alyzed three hundred different events reach-
For Shareable, success is very much about ing over twenty thousand people since imple-
their impact on the world. This is true for Neal, menting this strategy three years ago. Going
but also for everyone who works for Share- forward, Shareable is focusing the network
able. “We attract passionate people,” Neal on creating and distributing content meant to
said. At times, that means employees work so spur local action. For instance, Shareable will
hard they burn out. Neal tries to stress to the publish a new CC-licensed book in 2017 filled
Shareable team that another part of success with ideas for their network to implement.
is having fun and taking care of yourself while Neal says Shareable stumbled upon this
you do something you love. “A central part of strategy, but it seems to perfectly encapsu-
human beings is that we long to be on a great late just how the commons is supposed to
adventure with people we love,” he said. “We work. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach,
are a species who look over the horizon and Shareable puts the tools out there for people
imagine and create new worlds, but we also take the ideas and adapt them to their own
seek the comfort of hearth and home.” communities.
In 2013, Shareable ran its first crowdfunding
campaign to launch their Sharing Cities Net-
work. Neal said at first they were on pace to
fail spectacularly. They called in their advisers
in a panic and asked for help. The advice they
received was simple—“Sit your ass in a chair
and start making calls.” That’s exactly what
they did, and they ended up reaching their
$50,000 goal. Neal said the campaign helped
them reach new people, but the vast majority
of backers were people in their existing base.
For Neal, this symbolized how so much of
success comes down to relationships. Over
time, Shareable has invested time and energy
into the relationships they have forged with
their readers and supporters. They have also
invested resources into building relationships
between their readers and supporters.
Shareable began hosting events in 2010.
These events were designed to bring the shar-
ing community together. But over time they re-
alized they could reach far more people if they
helped their readers to host their own events.
“If we wanted to go big on a conference, there
was a huge risk and huge staffing needs, plus
only a fraction of our community could travel
to the event,” Neal said. Enabling others to cre-
ate their own events around the globe allowed
them to scale up their work more effectively
Made With Creative Commons 123
124 Made With Creative Commons
SIYAVULA
Siyavula is a for-profit educational-technology www.siyavula.com
company that creates textbooks and integrat-
ed learning experiences. Founded in 2012 in Revenue model: charging for custom
South Africa. services, sponsorships
Interview date: April 5, 2016
Interviewee: Mark Horner, CEO
Profile written by Paul Stacey
Openness is a key principle for Siyavula. They textbooks, so Mark and his colleagues set out
believe that every learner and teacher should to write them and make them freely available.
have access to high-quality educational re- As physicists, Mark and his colleagues were
sources, as this forms the basis for long-term advocates of open-source software. To make
growth and development. Siyavula has been the books open and free, they adopted the
a pioneer in creating high-quality open text- Free Software Foundation’s GNU Free Docu-
books on mathematics and science subjects mentation License.1 They chose LaTeX, a type-
for grades 4 to 12 in South Africa. setting program used to publish scientific doc-
In terms of creating an open business mod- uments, to author the books. Over a period of
el that involves Creative Commons, Siyavu- five years, the Free High School Science Texts
la—and its founder, Mark Horner—have been project produced math and physical-science
around the block a few times. Siyavula has sig- textbooks for grades 10 to 12.
nificantly shifted directions and strategies to In 2007, the Shuttleworth Foundation of-
survive and prosper. Mark says it’s been very fered funding support to make the textbooks
organic. available for trial use at more schools. Surveys
It all started in 2002, when Mark and sever- before and after the textbooks were adopt-
al other colleagues at the University of Cape ed showed there were no substantial criti-
Town in South Africa founded the Free High cisms of the textbooks’ pedagogical content.
School Science Texts project. Most students in This pleased both the authors and Shuttle-
South Africa high schools didn’t have access to worth; Mark remains incredibly proud of this
high-quality, comprehensive science and math accomplishment.
Made With Creative Commons 125
But the development of new textbooks remix and edit the content. Mark and his team
froze at this stage. Mark shifted his focus to had to come up with an open editable format
rural schools, which didn’t have textbooks at and provide tools for editing. They ended up
all, and looked into the printing and distribu- putting all the books they’d acquired and au-
tion options. A few sponsors came on board thored on a platform called Connexions.3 Si-
but not enough to meet the need. yavula trained many teachers to use Connex-
ions, but it proved to be too complex and the
textbooks were rarely edited.
Then the Shuttleworth Foundation decided
In 2007, Shuttleworth and the Open Society to completely restructure its work as a founda-
Institute convened a group of open-education tion into a fellowship model (for reasons com-
activists for a small but lively meeting in Cape pletely unrelated to Siyavula). As part of that
Town. One result was the Cape Town Open transition in 2009–10, Mark inherited Siyavula
Education Declaration, a statement of princi- as an independent entity and took ownership
ples, strategies, and commitment to help the over it as a Shuttleworth fellow.
open-education movement grow.2 Shuttle- Mark and his team experimented with sev-
worth also invited Mark to run a project writ- eral different strategies. They tried creating
ing open content for all subjects for K–12 in En- an authoring and hosting platform called Full
glish. That project became Siyavula. Marks so that teachers could share assess-
They wrote six original textbooks. A small ment items. They tried creating a service called
publishing company offered Shuttleworth Open Press, where teachers could ask for open
the option to buy out the publisher’s existing educational resources to be aggregated into a
K–9 content for every subject in South African package and printed for them. These services
schools in both English and Afrikaans. A deal never really panned out.
was struck, and all the acquired content was
licensed with Creative Commons, significantly
expanding the collection beyond the six origi-
nal books. Then the South African government ap-
Mark wanted to build out the remaining proached Siyavula with an interest in printing
curricula collaboratively through communities out the original six Free High School Science
of practice—that is, with fellow educators and Texts (math and physical-science textbooks
writers. Although sharing is fundamental to for grades 10 to 12) for all high school students
teaching, there can be a few challenges when in South Africa. Although at this point Siyavu-
you create educational resources collectively. la was a bit discouraged by open educational
One concern is legal. It is standard practice in resources, they saw this as a big opportunity.
education to copy diagrams and snippets of They began to conceive of the six books
text, but of course this doesn’t always com- as having massive marketing potential for Si-
ply with copyright law. Another concern is yavula. Printing Siyavula books for every kid in
transparency. Sharing what you’ve authored South Africa would give their brand huge ex-
means everyone can see it and opens you up posure and could drive vast amounts of traffic
to criticism. To alleviate these concerns, Mark to their website. In addition to print books, Si-
adopted a team-based approach to authoring
and insisted the curricula be based entirely on
resources with Creative Commons licenses, USING SIYAVULA BOOKS
thereby ensuring they were safe to share and
free from legal repercussions. GENERATED HUGE SAVINGS FOR
Not only did Mark want the resources to be
shareable, he wanted all teachers to be able to THE GOVERNMENT.
126 Made With Creative Commons
yavula could also make the books available on low-income demographic, as credit cards were
their website, making it possible for learners not prevalent. Mark says Siyavula got a harsh
to access them using any device—computer, business-model lesson early on. As he de-
tablet, or mobile phone. scribes it, it’s not just about product, but how
Mark and his team began imagining what you sell it, who the market is, what the price is,
they could develop beyond what was in the and what the barriers to entry are.
textbooks as a service they charge for. One Mark describes this as the first version of
key thing you can’t do well in a printed text- Siyavula’s business model: open textbooks
book is demonstrate solutions. Typically, a serving as marketing material and driving traf-
one-line answer is given at the end of the book fic to your site, where you can offer a related
but nothing on the process for arriving at that service and convert some people into a paid
solution. Mark and his team developed prac- customer.
tice items and detailed solutions, giving learn- For Mark a key decision for Siyavula’s busi-
ers plenty of opportunity to test out what ness was to focus on how they can add value
they’ve learned. Furthermore, an algorithm on top of their basic service. They’ll charge
could adapt these practice items to the individ- only if they are adding unique value. The actu-
ual needs of each learner. They called this ser- al content of the textbook isn’t unique at all, so
vice Intelligent Practice and embedded links to Siyavula sees no value in locking it down and
it in the open textbooks. charging for it. Mark contrasts this with tra-
The costs for using Intelligent Practice were ditional publishers who charge over and over
set very low, making it accessible even to those again for the same content without adding
with limited financial means. Siyavula was go- value.
ing for large volumes and wide-scale use rath-
er than an expensive product targeting only
the high end of the market.
The government distributed the books to Version two of Siyavula’s business model was
1.5 million students, but there was an unex- a big, ambitious idea—scale up. They also de-
pected wrinkle: the books were delivered late. cided to sell the Intelligent Practice service to
Rather than wait, schools who could afford it schools directly. Schools can subscribe on a
provided students with a different textbook. per-student, per-subject basis. A single sub-
The Siyavula books were eventually distribut- scription gives a learner access to a single
ed, but with well-off schools mainly using a dif- subject, including practice content from every
ferent book, the primary market for Siyavula’s grade available for that subject. Lower sub-
Intelligent Practice service inadvertently be- scription rates are provided when there are
came low-income learners. over two hundred students, and big schools
Siyavula’s site did see a dramatic increase have a price cap. A 40 percent discount is of-
in traffic. They got five hundred thousand fered to schools where both the science and
visitors per month to their math site and the math departments subscribe.
same number to their science site. Two-fifths Teachers get a dashboard that allows them
of the traffic was reading on a “feature phone” to monitor the progress of an entire class or
(a nonsmartphone with no apps). People on view an individual learner’s results. They can
basic phones were reading math and science see the questions that learners are working
on a two-inch screen at all hours of the day. on, identify areas of difficulty, and be more
To Mark, it was quite amazing and spoke to a strategic in their teaching. Students also have
need they were servicing. their own personalized dashboard, where they
At first, the Intelligent Practice services can view the sections they’ve practiced, how
could only be paid using a credit card. This many points they’ve earned, and how their
proved problematic, especially for those in the performance is improving.
Made With Creative Commons 127
Based on the success of this effort, Siyavula Using Siyavula books generated huge sav-
decided to substantially increase the produc- ings for the government. Providing students
tion of open educational resources so they with a traditionally published grade 12 science
could provide the Intelligent Practice service or math textbook costs around 250 rand per
for a wider range of books. Grades 10 to 12 book (about US$18). Providing the Siyavula
math and science books were reworked each version cost around 36 rand (about $2.60), a
year, and new books created for grades 4 to 6 savings of over 200 rand per book. But none
and later grades 7 to 9. of those savings were passed on to Siyavula. In
In partnership with, and sponsored by, the retrospect, Mark thinks this may have turned
Sasol Inzalo Foundation, Siyavula produced out in their favor as it allowed them to remain
a series of natural sciences and technology independent from the government.
workbooks for grades 4 to 6 called Thunder- Just as Siyavula was planning to scale up
bolt Kids that uses a fun comic-book style.4 It’s the production of open textbooks even more,
a complete curriculum that also comes with the South African government changed its
teacher’s guides and other resources. textbook policy. To save costs, the govern-
Through this experience, Siyavula learned ment declared there would be only one autho-
they could get sponsors to help fund open- rized textbook for each grade and each sub-
ly licensed textbooks. It helped that Siyavula ject. There was no guarantee that Siyavula’s
had by this time nailed the production model. would be chosen. This scared away potential
It cost roughly $150,000 to produce a book in sponsors.
two languages. Sponsors liked the social-ben-
efit aspect of textbooks unlocked via a Cre-
ative Commons license. They also liked the ex-
posure their brand got. For roughly $150,000, Rather than producing more textbooks, Si-
their logo would be visible on books distribut- yavula focused on improving its Intelligent
ed to over one million students. Practice technology for its existing books.
The Siyavula books that are reviewed, ap- Mark calls this version three of Siyavula’s busi-
proved, and branded by the government are ness model—focusing on the technology that
freely and openly available on Siyavula’s web- provides the revenue-generating service and
site under an Attribution-NoDerivs license (CC generating more users of this service. Version
BY-ND) —NoDerivs means that these books three got a significant boost in 2014 with an in-
cannot be modified. Non-government-brand- vestment by the Omidyar Network (the philan-
ed books are available under an Attribution thropic venture started by eBay founder Pierre
license (CC BY), allowing others to modify and Omidyar and his spouse), and continues to be
redistribute the books. the model Siyavula uses today.
Although the South African government Mark says sales are way up, and they are
paid to print and distribute hard copies of the really nailing Intelligent Practice. Schools con-
books to schoolkids, Siyavula itself received tinue to use their open textbooks. The govern-
no funding from the government. Siyavula ment-announced policy that there would be
initially tried to convince the government to only one textbook per subject turned out to
provide them with five rand per book (about be highly contentious and is in limbo.
US35¢). With those funds, Mark says that Si- Siyavula is exploring a range of enhance-
yavula could have run its entire operation, ments to their business model. These include
built a community-based model for producing charging a small amount for assessment ser-
more books, and provide Intelligent Practice vices provided over the phone, diversifying
for free to every child in the country. But after their market to all English-speaking countries
a lengthy negotiation, the government said no. in Africa, and setting up a consortium that
128 Made With Creative Commons
makes Intelligent Practice free to all kids by
selling the nonpersonal data Intelligent Prac-
tice collects.
Siyavula is a for-profit business but one with
a social mission. Their shareholders’ agree-
ment lists lots of requirements around open-
ness for Siyavula, including stipulations that
content always be put under an open license
and that they can’t charge for something that
people volunteered to do for them. They be-
lieve each individual should have access to the
resources and support they need to achieve
the education they deserve. Having educa-
tional resources openly licensed with Creative
Commons means they can fulfill their social
mission, on top of which they can build reve-
nue-generating services to sustain the ongo-
ing operation of Siyavula. In terms of open
business models, Mark and Siyavula may have
been around the block a few times, but both
he and the company are stronger for it.
Web links
1 www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl
2 www.capetowndeclaration.org
3 cnx.org
4 www.siyavula.com/products
-primary-school.html
Made With Creative Commons 129
130 Made With Creative Commons
SPARKFUN
SparkFun is an online electronics retailer spe- www.sparkfun.com
cializing in open hardware. Founded in 2003
in the U.S. Revenue model: charging for physical copies
(electronics sales)
Interview date: February 29, 2016
Interviewee: Nathan Seidle, founder
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
SparkFun founder and former CEO Nathan Se- make their products on their own. Being cop-
idle has a picture of himself holding up a clone ied is part of the design.
of a SparkFun product in an electronics market Nathan believes open licensing is good for
in China, with a huge grin on his face. He was the world. “It touches on our natural human
traveling in China when he came across their instinct to share,” he said. But he also strongly
LilyPad wearable technology being made by believes it makes SparkFun better at what they
someone else. His reaction was glee. do. They encourage copying, and their prod-
“Being copied is the greatest earmark of ucts are copied at a very fast rate, often within
flattery and success,” Nathan said. “I thought ten to twelve weeks of release. This forces the
it was so cool that they were selling to a mar- company to compete on something other than
ket we were never going to get access to oth- product design, or what most commonly con-
erwise. It was evidence of our impact on the sider their intellectual property.
world.” “We compete on business principles,” Na-
This worldview runs through everything than said. “Claiming your territory with intel-
SparkFun does. SparkFun is an electronics lectual property allows you to get comfy and
manufacturer. The company sells its products rest on your laurels. It gives you a safety net.
directly to the public online, and it bundles We took away that safety net.”
them with educational tools to sell to schools The result is an intense company-wide fo-
and teachers. SparkFun applies Creative Com- cus on product development and improve-
mons licenses to all of its schematics, images, ment. “Our products are so much better than
tutorial content, and curricula, so anyone can they were five years ago,” Nathan said. “We
Made With Creative Commons 131
used to just sell products. Now it’s a product BEING COPIED IS THE GREATEST
plus a video, a seventeen-page hookup guide,
and example firmware on three different plat- EARMARK OF FLATTERY AND
forms to get you up and running faster. We
have gotten better because we had to in order SUCCESS.
to compete. As painful as it is for us, it’s better
for the customers.”
SparkFun parts are available on eBay for ucts, but they also partner with Arduino (also
lower prices. But people come directly to profiled in this book) by manufacturing boards
SparkFun because SparkFun makes their lives for resale using Arduino’s brand.
easier. The example code works; there is a SparkFun also has an educational depart-
service number to call; they ship replacement ment dedicated to creating a hands-on curric-
parts the day they get a service call. They in- ulum to teach students about electronics us-
vest heavily in service and support. “I don’t be- ing prototyping parts. Because SparkFun has
lieve businesses should be competing with IP always been dedicated to enabling others to
[intellectual property] barriers,” Nathan said. re-create and fix their products on their own,
“This is the stuff they should be competing on.” the more recent focus on introducing young
people to technology is a natural extension of
their core business.
“We have the burden and opportunity to
SparkFun’s company history began in Nathan’s educate the next generation of technical citi-
college dorm room. He spent a lot of time ex- zens,” Nathan said. “Our goal is to affect the
perimenting with and building electronics, and lives of three hundred and fifty thousand high
he realized there was a void in the market. “If school students by 2020.”
you wanted to place an order for something,” The Creative Commons license underlying
he said, “you first had to search far and wide all of SparkFun’s products is central to this
to find it, and then you had to call or fax some- mission. The license not only signals a willing-
one.” In 2003, during his third year of college, ness to share, but it also expresses a desire for
he registered sparkfun.com and started re- others to get in and tinker with their products,
selling products out of his bedroom. After he both to learn and to make their products bet-
graduated, he started making and selling his ter. SparkFun uses the Attribution-ShareAlike
own products. license (CC BY-SA), which is a “copyleft” license
Once he started designing his own prod- that allows people to do anything with the con-
ucts, he began putting the software and sche- tent as long as they provide credit and make
matics online to help with technical support. any adaptations available under the same li-
After doing some research on licensing op- censing terms.
tions, he chose Creative Commons licenses
because he was drawn to the “human-read-
able deeds” that explain the licensing terms in
simple terms. SparkFun still uses CC licenses From the beginning, Nathan has tried to create
for all of the schematics and firmware for the a work environment at SparkFun that he him-
products they create. self would want to work in. The result is what
The company has grown from a solo project appears to be a pretty fun workplace. The U.S.
to a corporation with 140 employees. In 2015, company is based in Boulder, Colorado. They
SparkFun earned $33 million in revenue. Sell- have an eighty-thousand-square-foot facility
ing components and widgets to hobbyists, pro- (approximately seventy-four-hundred square
fessionals, and artists remains a major part of meters), where they design and manufacture
SparkFun’s business. They sell their own prod- their products. They offer public tours of the
132 Made With Creative Commons
space several times a week, and they open ers and tries to build on them where they can.
their doors to the public for a competition “From the beginning, we have been listening
once a year. to the community,” Nathan said. “Customers
The public event, called the Autonomous would identify a pain point, and we would de-
Vehicle Competition, brings in a thousand to sign something to address it.”
two thousand customers and other technolo- However, this sort of customer engagement
gy enthusiasts from around the area to race does not always translate to people actively
their own self-created bots against each oth- contributing to SparkFun’s projects. The com-
er, participate in training workshops, and so- pany has a public repository of software code
cialize. From a business perspective, Nathan for each of its devices online. On a particular-
says it’s a terrible idea. But they don’t hold the ly active project, there will only be about two
event for business reasons. “The reason we dozen people contributing significant improve-
do it is because I get to travel and have inter- ments. The vast majority of projects are rela-
actions with our customers all the time, but tively untouched by the public. “There is a the-
most of our employees don’t,” he said. “This ory that if you open-source it, they will come,”
event gives our employees the opportunity to Nathan said. “That’s not really true.”
get face-to-face contact with our customers.” Rather than focusing on cocreation with
The event infuses their work with a human el- their customers, SparkFun instead focuses on
ement, which makes it more meaningful. enabling people to copy, tinker, and improve
Nathan has worked hard to imbue a deep- products on their own. They heavily invest in
er meaning into the work SparkFun does. The tutorials and other material designed to help
company is, of course, focused on being fiscal- people understand how the products work so
ly responsible, but they are ultimately driven they can fix and improve things independently.
by something other than money. “Profit is not “What gives me joy is when people take open-
the goal; it is the outcome of a well-executed source layouts and then build their own circuit
plan,” Nathan said. “We focus on having a big- boards from our designs,” Nathan said.
ger impact on the world.” Nathan believes they Obviously, opening up the design of their
get some of the brightest and most amazing products is a necessary step if their goal is to
employees because they aren’t singularly fo- empower the public. Nathan also firmly be-
cused on the bottom line. lieves it makes them more money because
The company is committed to transparency it requires them to focus on how to provide
and shares all of its financials with its employ- maximum value. Rather than designing a new
ees. They also generally strive to avoid being product and protecting it in order to extract as
another soulless corporation. They actively much money as possible from it, they release
try to reveal the humans behind the compa- the keys necessary for others to build it them-
ny, and they work to ensure people coming to selves and then spend company time and re-
their site don’t find only unchanging content. sources on innovation and service. From a
short-term perspective, SparkFun may lose a
few dollars when others copy their products.
But in the long run, it makes them a more
SparkFun’s customer base is largely made up of nimble, innovative business. In other words, it
industrious electronics enthusiasts. They have makes them the kind of company they set out
customers who are regularly involved in the to be.
company’s customer support, independently
responding to questions in forums and prod-
uct-comment sections. Customers also bring
product ideas to the company. SparkFun reg-
ularly sifts through suggestions from custom-
Made With Creative Commons 133
134 Made With Creative Commons
TEACHAIDS
TeachAIDS is a nonprofit that creates edu- teachaids.org
cational materials designed to teach people
around the world about HIV and AIDS. Found- Revenue model: sponsorships
ed in 2005 in the U.S.
Interview date: March 24, 2016
Interviewees: Piya Sorcar, the CEO, and Shuman Ghosemajumder, the chair
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
TeachAIDS is an unconventional media com- made available under a Creative Commons li-
pany with a conventional revenue model. Like cense.
most media companies, they are subsidized
by advertising. Corporations pay to have their
logos appear on the educational materials
TeachAIDS distributes. TeachAIDS is a labor of love for founder and
But unlike most media companies, Teach- CEO Piya Sorcar, who earns a salary of one
AIDS is a nonprofit organization with a purely dollar per year from the nonprofit. The proj-
social mission. TeachAIDS is dedicated to ed- ect grew out of research she was doing while
ucating the global population about HIV and pursuing her doctorate at Stanford University.
AIDS, particularly in parts of the world where She was reading reports about India, noting
education efforts have been historically unsuc- it would be the next hot zone of people living
cessful. Their educational content is conveyed with HIV. Despite international and nation-
through interactive software, using methods al entities pouring in hundreds of millions of
based on the latest research about how peo- dollars on HIV-prevention efforts, the reports
ple learn. TeachAIDS serves content in more showed knowledge levels were still low. Peo-
than eighty countries around the world. In ple were unaware of whether the virus could
each instance, the content is translated to the be transmitted through coughing and sneez-
local language and adjusted to conform to lo- ing, for instance. Supported by an interdisci-
cal norms and customs. All content is free and plinary team of experts at Stanford, Piya con-
ducted similar studies, which corroborated
Made With Creative Commons 135
the previous research. They found that the pri- Choosing a license that does not allow adap-
mary cause of the limited understanding was tation of the content was an outgrowth of the
that HIV, and issues relating to it, were often careful precision with which TeachAIDS crafts
considered too taboo to discuss comprehen- their content. The organization invests heavily
sively. The other major problem was that most in research and testing to determine the best
of the education on this topic was being taught method of conveying the information. “Creat-
through television advertising, billboards, and ing high-quality content is what matters most
other mass-media campaigns, which meant to us,” Piya said. “Research drives everything
people were only receiving bits and pieces of we do.”
information. One important finding was that people ac-
In late 2005, Piya and her team used re- cept the message best when it comes from fa-
search-based design to create new education- miliar voices they trust and admire. To achieve
al materials and worked with local partners in this, TeachAIDS researches cultural icons that
India to help distribute them. As soon as the would best resonate with their target audienc-
animated software was posted online, Piya’s es and recruits them to donate their likenesses
team started receiving requests from indi- and voices for use in the animated software.
viduals and governments who were interest- The celebrities involved vary for each localized
ed in bringing this model to more countries. version of the materials.
“We realized fairly quickly that educating large Localization is probably the single-most im-
populations about a topic that was consid- portant aspect of the way TeachAIDS creates
ered taboo would be challenging. We began by its content. While each regional version builds
identifying optimal local partners and worked from the same core scientific materials, they
toward creating an effective, culturally appro- pour a lot of resources into customizing the
priate education,” Piya said. content for a particular population. Because
Very shortly after the initial release, Piya’s they use a CC license that does not allow the
team decided to spin the endeavor into an in- public to adapt the content, TeachAIDS retains
dependent nonprofit out of Stanford Univer- careful control over the localization process.
sity. They also decided to use Creative Com- The content is translated into the local lan-
mons licenses on the materials. guage, but there are also changes in substance
Given their educational mission, TeachAIDS and format to reflect cultural differences. This
had an obvious interest in seeing the materi- process results in minor changes, like choosing
als as widely shared as possible. But they also different idioms based on the local language,
needed to preserve the integrity of the med- and significant changes, like creating gendered
ical information in the content. They chose versions for places where people are more
the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs li- likely to accept information from someone of
cense (CC BY-NC-ND), which essentially gives the same gender.
the public the right to distribute only verba- The localization process relies heavily on
tim copies of the content, and for noncom- volunteers. Their volunteer base is deeply
mercial purposes. “We wanted attribution for committed to the cause, and the organization
TeachAIDS, and we couldn’t stand by deriva- has had better luck controlling the quality of
tives without vetting them,” the cofounder and the materials when they tap volunteers instead
chair Shuman Ghosemajumder said. “It was of using paid translators. For quality control,
almost a no-brainer to go with a CC license TeachAIDS has three separate volunteer teams
because it was a plug-and-play solution to this translate the materials from English to the lo-
exact problem. It has allowed us to scale our cal language and customize the content based
materials safely and quickly worldwide while on local customs and norms. Those three ver-
preserving our content and protecting us at sions are then analyzed and combined into a
the same time.” single master translation. TeachAIDS has ad-
136 Made With Creative Commons
ditional teams of volunteers then translate way to persuade them to use our highly effec-
that version back into English to see how well tive model was to make it completely free.”
it lines up with the original materials. They re- Like many content creators offering their
peat this process until they reach a translated work for free, they settled on advertising as a
version that meets their standards. For the funding model. But they were extremely care-
Tibetan version, they went through this cycle ful not to let the advertising compromise their
eleven times. credibility or undermine the heavy investment
TeachAIDS employs full-time employees, they put into creating quality content. Spon-
contractors, and volunteers, all in different sors of the content have no ability to influence
capacities and organizational configurations. the substance of the content, and they cannot
They are careful to use people from diverse even create advertising content. Sponsors only
backgrounds to create the materials, including get the right to have their logo appear before
teachers, students, and doctors, as well as in- and after the educational content. All of the
dividuals experienced in working in the NGO content remains branded as TeachAIDS.
space. This diversity and breadth of knowl- TeachAIDS is careful not to seek funding to
edge help ensure their materials resonate cover the costs of a specific project. Instead,
with people from all walks of life. Additionally, sponsorships are structured as unrestricted
TeachAIDS works closely with film writers and donations to the nonprofit. This gives the non-
directors to help keep the concepts entertain- profit more stability, but even more important-
ing and easy to understand. The inclusive, but ly, it enables them to subsidize projects being
highly controlled, creative process is under- localized for an area with no sponsors. “If we
taken entirely by people who are specifically just created versions based on where we could
brought on to help with a particular project, get sponsorships, we would only have materi-
rather than ongoing staff. The final product als for wealthier countries,” Shuman said.
they create is designed to require zero train- As of 2016, TeachAIDS has dozens of spon-
ing for people to implement in practice. “In our sors. “When we go into a new country, various
research, we found we can’t depend on peo- companies hear about us and reach out to us,”
ple passing on the information correctly, even Piya said. “We don’t have to do much to find or
if they have the best of intentions,” Piya said. attract them.” They believe the sponsorships
“We need materials where you can push play are easy to sell because they offer so much val-
and they will work.” ue to sponsors. TeachAIDS sponsorships give
corporations the chance to reach new eyeballs
with their brand, but at a much lower cost than
other advertising channels. The audience for
Piya’s team was able to produce all of these TeachAIDS content also tends to skew young,
versions over several years with a head count which is often a desirable demographic for
that never exceeded eight full-time employ- brands. Unlike traditional advertising, the con-
ees. The organization is able to reduce costs tent is not time-sensitive, so an investment in
by relying heavily on volunteers and in-kind a sponsorship can benefit a brand for many
donations. Nevertheless, the nonprofit need- years to come.
ed a sustainable revenue model to subsidize Importantly, the value to corporate spon-
content creation and physical distribution of sors goes beyond commercial considerations.
the materials. Charging even a low price was As a nonprofit with a clearly articulated so-
simply not an option. “Educators from various cial mission, corporate sponsorships are do-
nonprofits around the world were just creating nations to a cause. “This is something com-
their own materials using whatever they could panies can be proud of internally,” Shuman
find for free online,” Shuman said. “The only said. Some companies have even built public-
Made With Creative Commons 137
ity campaigns around the fact that they have
sponsored these initiatives.
The core mission of TeachAIDS—ensuring
global access to life-saving education—is at
the root of everything the organization does. It
underpins the work; it motivates the funders.
The CC license on the materials they create
furthers that mission, allowing them to safe-
ly and quickly scale their materials worldwide.
“The Creative Commons license has been a
game changer for TeachAIDS,” Piya said.
138 Made With Creative Commons
TRIBE
OF NOISE
Tribe of Noise is a for-profit online music plat- www.tribeofnoise.com
form serving the film, TV, video, gaming, and
in-store-media industries. Founded in 2008 in Revenue model: charging a transaction fee
the Netherlands.
Interview date: January 26, 2016
Interviewee: Hessel van Oorschot, cofounder
Profile written by Paul Stacey
In the early 2000s, Hessel van Oorschot was sician without going through record labels or
an entrepreneur running a business where he agents. But in 2005, the ability to directly li-
coached other midsize entrepreneurs how to cense music from a rights holder was not read-
create an online business. He also coauthored ily available.
a number of workbooks for small- to medium- They hired two lawyers to investigate fur-
size enterprises to use to optimize their busi- ther, and while they uncovered five or six ex-
ness for the Web. Through this early work, amples, Hessel found the business models
Hessel became familiar with the principles lacking. The lawyers expressed interest in
of open licensing, including the use of open- being their legal team should they decide to
source software and Creative Commons. pursue this as an entrepreneurial opportunity.
In 2005, Hessel and Sandra Brandenburg Hessel says, “When lawyers are interested in
launched a niche video-production initia- a venture like this, you might have something
tive. Almost immediately, they ran into issues special.” So after some more research, in ear-
around finding and licensing music tracks. All ly 2008, Hessel and Sandra decided to build a
they could find was standard, cold stock-mu- platform.
sic. They thought of looking up websites where
you could license music directly from the mu-
Made With Creative Commons 139
Building a platform posed a real chicken-and- arguing that they primarily work with unknown
egg problem. The platform had to build an on- artists and provide them exposure in parts of
line community of music-rights holders and, at the world where they don’t get airtime normal-
the same time, provide the community with in- ly and a source of revenue—and this convinced
formation and ideas about how the new econ- them that it was OK. However, Hessel says, “We
omy works. Community willingness to try new are still fighting for a good cause every single
music business models requires a trust rela- day.”
tionship. Instead of building a large sales force, Tribe
In July 2008, Tribe of Noise opened its virtual of Noise partnered with big organizations who
doors with a couple hundred musicians willing have lots of clients and can act as a kind of Tribe
to use the CC BY-SA license (Attribution-Share- of Noise reseller. The largest telecom network
Alike) for a limited part of their repertoire. The in the Netherlands, for example, sells Tribe’s In-
two entrepreneurs wanted to take the pain store Music Service subscriptions to their busi-
away for media makers who wanted to license ness clients, which include fashion retailers and
music and solve the problems the two had per- fitness centers. They have a similar deal with the
sonally experienced finding this music. leading trade association representing hotels
As they were growing the community, Hessel and restaurants in the country. Hessel hopes to
got a phone call from a company that made in- “copy and paste” this service into other coun-
store music playlists asking if they had enough tries where collecting societies understand
music licensed with Creative Commons that what you can do with Creative Commons. Out-
they could use. Stores need quality, good-lis- side of the Netherlands, early adoptions have
tening music but not necessarily hits, a bit like happened in Scandinavia, Belgium, and the U.S.
a radio show without the DJ. This opened a
new opportunity for Tribe of Noise. They start-
ed their In-store Music Service, using music (li-
censed with CC BY-SA) uploaded by the Tribe of Tribe of Noise doesn’t pay the musicians up
Noise community of musicians.1 front; they get paid when their music ends up
in Tribe of Noise’s in-store music channels. The
musicians’ share is 42.5 percent. It’s not un-
common in a traditional model for the artist
In most countries, artists, authors, and musi- to get only 5 to 10 percent, so a share of over
cians join a collecting society that manages the 40 percent is a significantly better deal. Here’s
licensing and helps collect the royalties. Copy- how they give an example on their website:
right collecting societies in the European Union
usually hold monopolies in their respective na- A few of your songs [licensed with CC BY-SA],
tional markets. In addition, they require their for example five in total, are selected for a be-
members to transfer exclusive administration spoke in-store music channel broadcasting at
rights to them of all of their works. This compli- a large retailer with 1,000 stores nationwide. In
cates the picture for Tribe of Noise, who wants this case the overall playlist contains 350 songs
to represent artists, or at least a portion of their so the musician’s share is 5/350 = 1.43%. The li-
repertoire. Hessel and his legal team reached cense fee agreed with this retailer is US$12 per
out to collecting societies, starting with those in month per play-out. So if 42.5% is shared with
the Netherlands. What would be the best legal the Tribe musicians in this playlist and your
way forward that would respect the wishes of share is 1.43%, you end up with US$12 * 1000
composers and musicians who’d be interested stores * 0.425 * 0.0143 = US$73 per month.2
in trying out new models like the In-store Music
Service? Collecting societies at first were hesi- Tribe of Noise has another model that does
tant and said no, but Tribe of Noise persisted not involve Creative Commons. In a survey with
140 Made With Creative Commons
members, most said they liked the exposure WITH A WHOLE GENERATION
using Creative Commons gets them and the
way it lets them reach out to others to share OF MUSICIANS INTERESTED IN
and remix. However, they had a bit of a men-
tal struggle with Creative Commons licenses THE SHARING ECONOMY, THE
being perpetual. A lot of musicians have the
mind-set that one day one of their songs may COMMUNITY AREA OF TRIBE OF
become an overnight hit. If that happened the
CC BY-SA license would preclude them getting NOISE IS WHERE THEY CAN BUILD
rich off the sale of that song.
Hessel’s legal team took this feedback and TRUST, CREATE EXPOSURE, AND
created a second model and separate area of
the platform called Tribe of Noise Pro. Songs GENERATE MONEY.
uploaded to Tribe of Noise Pro aren’t Creative
Commons licensed; Tribe of Noise has instead
created a “nonexclusive exploitation” contract, as they like. Tribe of Noise is also a social net-
similar to a Creative Commons license but al- work; fellow musicians and professionals can
lowing musicians to opt out whenever they vote for, comment on, and like your music.
want. When you opt out, Tribe of Noise agrees Community managers interact with and sup-
to take your music off the Tribe of Noise plat- port members, and music supervisors pick and
form within one to two months. This lets the choose from the uploaded songs for in-store
musician reuse their song for a better deal. play or to promote them to media producers.
Tribe of Noise Pro is primarily geared toward Members really like having people working for
media makers who are looking for music. If the platform who truly engage with them.
they buy a license from this catalog, they don’t Another way Tribe of Noise creates commu-
have to state the name of the creator; they just nity and interest is with contests, which are
license the song for a specific amount. This is a organized in partnership with Tribe of Noise
big plus for media makers. And musicians can clients. The client specifies what they want,
pull their repertoire at any time. Hessel sees and any member can submit a song. Contests
this as a more direct and clean deal. usually involve prizes, exposure, and money.
Lots of Tribe of Noise musicians upload In addition to building member engagement,
songs to both Tribe of Noise Pro and the com- contests help members learn how to work
munity area of Tribe of Noises. There aren’t with clients: listening to them, understanding
that many artists who upload only to Tribe of what they want, and creating a song to meet
Noise Pro, which has a smaller repertoire of that need.
music than the community area. Tribe of Noise now has twenty-seven thou-
Hessel sees the two as complementary. sand members from 192 countries, and many
Both are needed for the model to work. With are exploring do-it-yourself models for gener-
a whole generation of musicians interested in ating revenue. Some came from music labels
the sharing economy, the community area of and publishers, having gone through the tradi-
Tribe of Noise is where they can build trust, tional way of music licensing and now seeing if
create exposure, and generate money. And this new model makes sense for them. Others
after that, musicians may become more inter- are young musicians, who grew up with a DIY
ested in exploring other models like Tribe of mentality and see little reason to sign with a
Noise Pro. third party or hand over some of the control.
Every musician who joins Tribe of Noise gets Still a small but growing group of Tribe mem-
their own home page and free unlimited Web bers are pursuing a hybrid model by licens-
space to upload as much of their own music ing some of their songs under CC BY-SA and
Made With Creative Commons 141
opting in others with collecting societies like
ASCAP or BMI.
It’s not uncommon for performance-rights
organizations, record labels, or music pub-
lishers to sign contracts with musicians based
on exclusivity. Such an arrangement prevents
those musicians from uploading their music to
Tribe of Noise. In the United States, you can
have a collecting society handle only some of
your tracks, whereas in many countries in Eu-
rope, a collecting society prefers to represent
your entire repertoire (although the European
Commission is making some changes). Tribe
of Noise deals with this issue all the time and
gives you a warning whenever you upload a
song. If collecting societies are willing to be
open and flexible and do the most they can for
their members, then they can consider orga-
nizations like Tribe of Noise as a nice add-on,
generating more exposure and revenue for
the musicians they represent. So far, Tribe of
Noise has been able to make all this work with-
out litigation.
For Hessel the key to Tribe of Noise’s success is
trust. The fact that Creative Commons licenses
work the same way all over the world and have
been translated into all languages really helps
build that trust. Tribe of Noise believes in cre-
ating a model where they work together with
musicians. They can only do that if they have a
live and kicking community, with people who
think that the Tribe of Noise team has their best
interests in mind. Creative Commons makes it
possible to create a new business model for
music, a model that’s based on trust.
Web links
1 www.instoremusicservice.com
2 www.tribeofnoise.com
/info_instoremusic.php
142 Made With Creative Commons
WIKIMEDIA
FOUNDATION
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit or- wikimediafoundation.org
ganization that hosts Wikipedia and its sister
projects. Founded in 2003 in the U.S. Revenue model: donations
Interview date: December 18, 2015
Interviewees: Luis Villa, former Chief Officer of Community Engagement,
and Stephen LaPorte, legal counsel
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
Nearly every person with an online presence dia domain name and hosts the site, along with
knows Wikipedia. many other related sites like Wikidata and Wi-
In many ways, it is the preeminent open kimedia Commons. The foundation employs
project: The online encyclopedia is created en- about two hundred and eighty people, who all
tirely by volunteers. Anyone in the world can work to support the projects it hosts. But the
edit the articles. All of the content is available true heart of Wikipedia and its sister projects
for free to anyone online. All of the content is is its community. The numbers of people in
released under a Creative Commons license the community are variable, but about seven-
that enables people to reuse and adapt it for ty-five thousand volunteers edit and improve
any purpose. Wikipedia articles every month. Volunteers are
As of December 2016, there were more than organized in a variety of ways across the globe,
forty-two million articles in the 295 language including formal Wikimedia chapters (most-
editions of the online encyclopedia, according ly national), groups focused on a particular
to—what else?—the Wikipedia article about theme, user groups, and many thousands who
Wikipedia. are not connected to a particular organization.
The Wikimedia Foundation is a U.S.-based As Wikimedia legal counsel Stephen LaPorte
nonprofit organization that owns the Wikipe- told us, “There is a common saying that Wiki-
Made With Creative Commons 143
pedia works in practice but not in theory.” sial subject areas, talk pages explaining deci-
While it undoubtedly has its challenges and sions, and much, much more.
flaws, Wikipedia and its sister projects are a The Wikimedia Foundation’s decision to
striking testament to the power of human col- leave governance of the projects to the com-
laboration. munity is very deliberate. “We look at the
Because of its extraordinary breadth and things that the community can do well, and we
scope, it does feel a bit like a unicorn. Indeed, want to let them do those things,” Stephen told
there is nothing else like Wikipedia. Still, much us. Instead, the foundation focuses its time
of what makes the projects successful— and resources on what the community cannot
community, transparency, a strong mission, do as effectively, like the software engineering
trust—are consistent with what it takes to be that supports the technical infrastructure of
successfully Made with Creative Commons the sites. In 2015-16, about half of the foun-
more generally. With Wikipedia, everything dation’s budget went to direct support for the
just happens at an unprecedented scale. Wikimedia sites.
Some of that is directed at servers and gen-
eral IT support, but the foundation also invests
a significant amount on architecture designed
The story of Wikipedia has been told many to help the site function as effectively as pos-
times. For our purposes, it is enough to know sible. “There is a constantly evolving system
the experiment started in 2001 at a small scale, to keep the balance in place to avoid Wikipe-
inspired by the crazy notion that perhaps a dia becoming the world’s biggest graffiti wall,”
truly open, collaborative project could create Luis said. Depending on how you measure it,
something meaningful. At this point, Wikipe- somewhere between 90 to 98 percent of edits
dia is so ubiquitous and ingrained in our digital to Wikipedia are positive. Some portion of that
lives that the fact of its existence seems less success is attributable to the tools Wikimedia
remarkable. But outside of software, Wikipe- has in place to try to incentivize good actors.
dia is perhaps the single most stunning exam- “The secret to having any healthy community
ple of successful community cocreation. Every is bringing back the right people,” Luis said.
day, seven thousand new articles are created “Vandals tend to get bored and go away. That
on Wikipedia, and nearly fifteen thousand ed- is partially our model working, and partially
its are made every hour. just human nature.” Most of the time, people
The nature of the content the community want to do the right thing.
creates is ideal for asynchronous cocreation. Wikipedia not only relies on good behav-
“An encyclopedia is something where incre- ior within its community and on its sites, but
mental community improvement really works,” also by everyone else once the content leaves
Luis Villa, former Chief Officer of Community Wikipedia. All of the text of Wikipedia is avail-
Engagement, told us. The rules and process- able under an Attribution-ShareAlike license
es that govern cocreation on Wikipedia and (CC BY-SA), which means it can be used for any
its sister projects are all community-driven purpose and modified so long as credit is giv-
and vary by language edition. There are entire en and anything new is shared back with the
books written on the intricacies of their sys- public under the same license. In theory, that
tems, but generally speaking, there are very means anyone can copy the content and start
few exceptions to the rule that anyone can edit a new Wikipedia. But as Stephen explained,
any article, even without an account on their “Being open has only made Wikipedia bigger
system. The extensive peer-review process in- and stronger. The desire to protect is not al-
cludes elaborate systems to resolve disputes, ways what is best for everyone.”
methods for managing particularly controver- Of course, the primary reason no one has
successfully co-opted Wikipedia is that copycat
144 Made With Creative Commons
efforts do not have the Wikipedia community freely share in the sum of all knowledge. They
to sustain what they do. Wikipedia is not sim- work to realize this vision by empowering peo-
ply a source of up-to-the-minute content on ple around the globe to create educational
every given topic—it is also a global patchwork content made freely available under an open
of humans working together in a million differ- license or in the public domain. Stephen and
ent ways, in a million different capacities, for Luis said the mission, which is rooted in the
a million different reasons. While many have same philosophy behind Creative Commons,
tried to guess what makes Wikipedia work as drives everything the foundation does.
well it does, the fact is there is no single expla- The philosophy behind the endeavor also
nation. “In a movement as large as ours, there enables the foundation to be financially sus-
is an incredible diversity of motivations,” Ste- tainable. It instills trust in their readership,
phen said. For example, there is one editor of which is critical for a revenue strategy that re-
the English Wikipedia edition who has correct- lies on reader donations. It also instills trust in
ed a single grammatical error in articles more their community.
than forty-eight thousand times.1 Any given edit on Wikipedia could be moti-
Only a fraction of Wikipedia users are also vated by nearly an infinite number of reasons.
editors. But editing is not the only way to con- But the social mission of the project is what
tribute to Wikipedia. “Some donate text, some binds the global community together. “Wikipe-
donate images, some donate financially,” Ste- dia is an example of how a mission can moti-
phen told us. “They are all contributors.” vate an entire movement,” Stephen told us.
But the vast majority of us who use Wiki- Of course, what results from that move-
pedia are not contributors; we are passive ment is one of the Internet’s great public re-
readers. The Wikimedia Foundation survives sources. “The Internet has a lot of businesses
primarily on individual donations, with about and stores, but it is missing the digital equiva-
$15 as the average. Because Wikipedia is one lent of parks and open public spaces,” Stephen
of the ten most popular websites in terms of said. “Wikipedia has found a way to be that
total page views, donations from a small por- open public space.”
tion of that audience can translate into a lot of
money. In the 2015-16 fiscal year, they received Web link
more than $77 million from more than five mil- 1 gimletmedia.com/episode/14-the-art-of
lion donors. -making-and-fixing-mistakes/
The foundation has a fund-raising team that
works year-round to raise money, but the bulk
of their revenue comes in during the Decem-
ber campaign in Australia, Canada, Ireland,
New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the
United States. They engage in extensive user
testing and research to maximize the reach
of their fund-raising campaigns. Their basic
fund-raising message is simple: We provide
our readers and the world immense value, so
give back. Every little bit helps. With enough
eyeballs, they are right.
The vision of the Wikimedia Foundation is a
world in which every single human being can
Made With Creative Commons 145
146 Made With Creative Commons
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We extend special thanks to Creative Com- guez, Daniel Morado, Darius Irvin, Dave Taille-
mons CEO Ryan Merkley, the Creative Com- fer, David Lewis, David Mikula, David Varnes,
mons Board, and all of our Creative Commons David Wiley, Deborah Nas, Diderik van Wing-
colleagues for enthusiastically supporting our erden, Dirk Kiefer, Dom Lane, Domi Enders,
work. Special gratitude to the William and Flora Douglas Van Houweling, Dylan Field, Einar
Hewlett Foundation for the initial seed funding Joergensen, Elad Wieder, Elie Calhoun, Erika
that got us started on this project. Reid, Evtim Papushev, Fauxton Software, Felix
Huge appreciation to all the Made with Maximiliano Obes, Ferdies Food Lab, Gatien
Creative Commons interviewees for sharing de Broucker, Gaurav Kapil, Gavin Romig-Koch,
their stories with us. You make the commons George Baier IV, George De Bruin, Gianpaolo
come alive. Thanks for the inspiration. Rando, Glenn Otis Brown, Govindarajan Uma-
We interviewed more than the twenty-four kanthan, Graham Bird, Graham Freeman,
organizations profiled in this book. We extend Hamish MacEwan, Harry Kaczka, Humble
special thanks to Gooru, OERu, Sage Bionet- Daisy, Ian Capstick, Iris Brest, James Cloos, Ja-
works, and Medium for sharing their stories mie Stevens, Jamil Khatib, Jane Finette, Jason
with us. While not featured as case studies in Blasso, Jason E. Barkeloo, Jay M Williams, Jean-
this book, you all are equally interesting, and Philippe Turcotte, Jeanette Frey, Jeff De Cagna,
we encourage our readers to visit your sites Jérôme Mizeret, Jessica Dickinson Goodman,
and explore your work. Jessy Kate Schingler, Jim O’Flaherty, Jim Pel-
This book was made possible by the gener- legrini, Jiří Marek, Jo Allum, Joachim von Goetz,
ous support of 1,687 Kickstarter backers listed Johan Adda, John Benfield, John Bevan, Jonas
below. We especially acknowledge our many Öberg, Jonathan Lin, JP Rangaswami, Juan Car-
Kickstarter co-editors who read early drafts los Belair, Justin Christian, Justin Szlasa, Kate
of our work and provided invaluable feedback. Chapman, Kate Stewart, Kellie Higginbottom,
Heartfelt thanks to all of you. Kendra Byrne, Kevin Coates, Kristina Pop-
ova, Kristoffer Steen, Kyle Simpson, Laurie
Co-editor Kickstarter backers (alphabetically by Racine, Leonardo Bueno Postacchini, Leticia
first name): Abraham Taherivand, Alan Gra- Britos Cavagnaro, Livia Leskovec, Louis-David
ham, Alfredo Louro, Anatoly Volynets, Aurora Benyayer, Maik Schmalstich, Mairi Thomson,
Thornton, Austin Tolentino, Ben Sheridan, Ben- Marcia Hofmann, Maria Liberman, Marino
edikt Foit, Benjamin Costantini, Bernd Nurn- Hernandez, Mario R. Hemsley, MD, Mark Co-
berger, Bernhard Seefeld, Bethanye Blount, hen, Mark Mullen, Mary Ellen Davis, Mathias
Bradford Benn, Bryan Mock, Carmen Garcia Bavay, Matt Black, Matt Hall, Max van Balgooy,
Wiedenhoeft, Carolyn Hinchliff, Casey Milford, Médéric Droz-dit-Busset, Melissa Aho, Men-
Cat Cooper, Chip McIntosh, Chris Thorne, Chris achem Goldstein, Michael Harries, Michael
Weber, Chutika Udomsinn, Claire Wardle, Clau- Lewis, Michael Weiss, Miha Batic, Mike Stop
dia Cristiani, Cody Allard, Colleen Cressman, Continues, Mike Stringer, Mustafa K Calik, MD,
Craig Thomler, Creative Commons Uruguay, Neal Stimler, Niall McDonagh, Niall Twohig,
Curt McNamara, Dan Parson, Daniel Domin- Nicholas Norfolk, Nick Coghlan, Nicole Hick-
Made With Creative Commons 151
man, Nikki Thompson, Norrie Mailer, Omar Ericsson, Andi Popp, André Bose Do Amaral,
Kaminski, OpenBuilds, Papp István Péter, Pat Andre Dickson, André Koot, André Ricardo, An-
Sticks, Patricia Brennan, Paul and Iris Brest, dre van Rooyen, Andre Wallace, Andrea Bagna-
Paul Elosegui, Penny Pearson, Peter Mengel- cani, Andrea Pepe, Andrea Pigato, Andreas
ers, Playground Inc., Pomax, Rafaela Kunz, Ra- Jagelund, Andres Gomez Casanova, Andrew A.
jiv Jhangiani, Rayna Stamboliyska, Rob Berkley, Farke, Andrew Berhow, Andrew Hearse, An-
Rob Bertholf, Robert Jones, Robert Thomp- drew Matangi, Andrew R McHugh, Andrew
son, Ronald van den Hoff, Rusi Popov, Ryan Tam, Andrew Turvey, Andrew Walsh, Andrew
Merkley, S Searle, Salomon Riedo, Samuel A. Wilson, Andrey Novoseltsev, Andy McGhee,
Rebelsky, Samuel Tait, Sarah McGovern, Scott Andy Reeve, Andy Woods, Angela Brett, Ange-
Gillespie, Seb Schmoller, Sharon Clapp, She- liki Kapoglou, Angus Keenan, Anne-Marie
ona Thomson, Siena Oristaglio, Simon Law, Scott, Antero Garcia, Antoine Authier, Antoine
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ey Strickler Axel Pettersson, Axel Stieglbauer, Ay Okpo-
kam, Barb Bartkowiak, Barbara Lindsey, Barry
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first name): A. Lee, Aaron C. Rathbun, Aaron Doherty, Ben Hansen, Ben Nuttall, Ben Rosen-
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Abraham Taherivand, Adam Croom, Adam Fin- Benjamin Costantini, Benjamin Daemon, Ben-
er, Adam Hansen, Adam Morris, Adam Procter, jamin Keele, Benjamin Pflanz, Berglind Ósk
Adam Quirk, Adam Rory Porter, Adam Sim- Bergsdóttir, Bernardo Miguel Antunes, Bernd
mons, Adam Tinworth, Adam Zimmerman, Nurnberger, Bernhard Seefeld, Beth Gis, Beth
Adrian Ho, Adrian Smith, Adriane Ruzak, Adria- Tillinghast, Bethanye Blount, Bill Bonwitt, Bill
no Loconte, Al Sweigart, Alain Imbaud, Alan Browne, Bill Keaggy, Bill Maiden, Bill Rafferty,
Graham, Alan M. Ford, Alan Swithenbank, Alan Bill Scanlon, Bill Shields, Bill Slankard, BJ Beck-
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jandro Suarez Cebrian, Aleks Degtyarev, Alex vik, BK Bitner, Bo Ilsøe Hansen, Bo Sprotte Ko-
Blood, Alex C. Ion, Alex Ross Shaw, Alexander fod, Bob Doran, Bob Recny, Bob Stuart, Bonnie
Bartl, Alexander Brown, Alexander Brunner, Chiu, Boris Mindzak, Boriss Lariushin, Borjan
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der Klar, Alexander Neumann, Alexander Benn, Bradley Keyes, Bradley L’Herrou, Brady
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Sevault, Alfredo Louro, Ali Sternburg, Alicia Brendan Schlagel, Brett Abbott, Brett Gaylor,
Gibb & Lunchbox Electronics, Alison Link, Ali- Brian Dysart, Brian Lampl, Brian Lipscomb,
son Pentecost, Alistair Boettiger, Alistair Brian S. Weis, Brian Schrader, Brian Walsh, Bri-
Walder, Alix Bernier, Allan Callaghan, Allen Rid- an Walsh, Brooke Dukes, Brooke Schreier
dell, Allison Breland Crotwell, Allison Jane Ganz, Bruce Lerner, Bruce Wilson, Bruno Bou-
Smith, Álvaro Justen, Amanda Palmer, Amanda tot, Bruno Girin, Bryan Mock, Bryant Durrell,
Wetherhold, Amit Bagree, Amit Tikare, Amos Bryce Barbato, Buzz Technology Limited,
Blanton, Amy Sept, Anatoly Volynets, Anders Byung-Geun Jeon, C. Glen Williams, C. L. Couch,
152 Made With Creative Commons
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teu, Carlos Correa Loyola, Carlos Solis, Carmen Dario Taraborelli, Darius Irvin, Darius Whelan,
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quardsen, Caroline Calomme, Caroline Mail- scough, Dave Bull, Dave Crosby, Dave Eagle,
loux, Carolyn Hinchliff, Carolyn Rude, Carrie Dave Moskovitz, Dave Neeteson, Dave Taille-
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Charles Chi Thoi Le, Charles Kobbe, Charles S. la, David Nelson, David Orban, David Parry,
Tritt, Charles Stanhope, Charlotte Ong-Wisen- David Spira, David T. Kindler, David Varnes, Da-
er, Chealsye Bowley, Chelle Destefano, Chen- vid Wiley, David Wormley, Deborah Nas, Denis
pang Chou, Cheryl Corte, Cheryl Todd, Chip Jean, dennis straub, Dennis Whittle, Denver
Dickerson, Chip McIntosh, Chris Bannister, Gingerich, Derek Slater, Devon Cooke, Diana
Chris Betcher, Chris Coleman, Chris Conway, Pasek-Atkinson, Diane Johnston Graves, Diane
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Bennett, Christine Henry, Christine Rico, Chris- po Deng, Donnovan Knight, Door de Flines,
topher Burrows, Christopher Chan, Christo- Doug Fitzpatrick, Doug Hoover, Douglas Crav-
pher Clay, Christopher Harris, Christopher er, Douglas Van Camp, Douglas Van Houwel-
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sis, Chuck Roslof, Chutika Udomsinn, Claire Sample, Durand D’souza, Dylan Field, E C Hum-
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stantin Graf, Corbett Messa, Cory Chapman, Emery Hurst Mikel, Emily Catedral, Enrique
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Heath, Craig Maloney, Craig Thomler, Creative leste, Eric Finkenbiner, Eric Hellman, Eric
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zzini, Curt McNamara, D C Petty, D. Moonfire, holm Bundgaard, Erika Reid, Erin Hawley, Erin
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Made With Creative Commons 153
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Zephyr Hsiao, Ferdies Food Lab, Fernand Des- Jakes Rawlinson, James Allenspach, James
chambault, Filipe Rodrigues, Filippo Toso, Fio- Chesky, James Cloos, James Docherty, James
na MacAlister, fiona.mac.uk, Floor Scheffer, Ellars, James K Wood, James Tyler, Jamie Finlay,
Florent Darrault, Florian Hähnel, Florian Jamie Stevens, Jamil Khatib, Jan E Ellison, Jan
Schneider, Floyd Wilde, Foxtrot Games, Francis Gondol, Jan Sepp, Jan Zuppinger, Jane Finette,
Clarke, Francisco Rivas-Portillo, Francois De- jane Lofton, Jane Mason, Jane Park, Janos Ko-
chery, Francois Grey, François Gros, François vacs, Jasmina Bricic, Jason Blasso, Jason Chu,
Pelletier, Fred Benenson, Frédéric Abella, Jason Cole, Jason E. Barkeloo, Jason Hibbets,
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tien de Broucker, Gaurav Kapil, Gauthier de Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Donoghue, Jeff Edwards, Jeff
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de Raad, Hans Vd Horst, Harold van Ingen, John Crumrine, John Dimatos, John Feyler, John
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ley, Michael Underwood, Michael Weiss, Mi- Dostál, Peeter Sällström Randsalu, Peggy Frith,
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