Creative Commons - User contributions [en]

Case Studies/Flickr

2012-11-13T00:01:34Z

DanH:

{{Case Study
|importance=High
|quality=A-Class
|Description=Flickr is a popular photo- and video-sharing site that has enabled Creative Commons licenses.
|Mainurl=www.flickr.com
|Author=Flickr
|User_Status=Curator
|Tag=photo, folksonomy, technical details
|License_short_name=various
|Format=Image, MovingImage
|Country=United States
|Quote=Making my photos available on flickr using a CC-license has made wonderful things happen. My photos have been used in classrooms, in books and on blogs. They have been used to illustrate articles in Wikipedia or help charities’ fund-raising campaigns.
|Quote_Attribution=Lars Plougmann, http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8157, http://www.flickr.com/people/criminalintent/
|Image_Header=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/5/5d/Flickr_by_zanastardust.jpg
|Image_attribution=CC BY by Zanastardust: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zanastardust/145197704/
|Image_license=http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
|alt_case_study_title=Flickr
}}
== Overview ==

Launched in 2004 and later acquired by Yahoo, Flickr is an image and video hosting website that allows users to post, share, and comment on each other's content. These photos are organized by user-submitted tags, which generate emergent folksonomies of thematically linked photos. Users can also create photo pools, which allow others to submit images into publicly available repositories. Notably, the site also allows for Creative Commons licensing support in its service, allowing creators to share certain rights for usage of their photos with others. As of late 2009, the site hosts over [http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/12/4000000000/ four billion images].

[http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/97258/ According to a Flickr staff member] in mid-2009, the site had acquired 32+ million registered users. Data on how this user base is distributed worldwide remains unclear. However, Flickr has been notably used by activists to compile and publicize events. Clay Shirky's <em>[http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/ Here Comes Everybody]</em> details the role played by Flickr in circulating photos of political protests in Belarus (p. 167). Similarly, Flickr users [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/04/flickrs-version-of-a-mass-protest/ organized onsite protests] against Microsoft's attempted buyout of Yahoo in 2008.

== License Usage ==

Users can choose to release their work under any of the available Creative Commons licenses. As of [http://blog.flickr.net/en/2011/10/05/200-million-creative-commons-photos-and-counting/ October 2011], Flickr hosted over 200 million CC licensed images. In March 2010, Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/20870 summarized] the growth of CC licensed photos on Flickr over the years.
<br/>
<br/>Flickr has also published its [http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/05/21/flickr-shapefiles-public-dataset-10/ shapefile dataset] online, waiving all copyright restrictions via the CC0 public domain dedication. A shapefile is a file containing shapes mathematically generated by thousands of Flickr geotagged photos of particular neighborhoods, countries, and continents. Shapefile data has been used to reverse-engineer maps with user generated longitude and latitude coordinates that are then demarcated by Where-On-Earth IDs, "[http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/30/the-shape-of-alpha/ unique numeric identifiers that correspond to the hierarchy of places where a photo was taken: the neighbourhood, the town, the county, and so on up to the continent]."

== Motivations ==

Jon Phillips, who worked closely with Flickr on CC integration, commented that open licensing was useful in "providing an interface with the rest of the world and the blogosphere without having to ask permission. It provided, in short, a clear path to usage."
<br/>
<br/>When Flickr first integrated CC licensing, they [http://blog.flickr.net/en/2004/06/29/creative-commons/ wrote] that "As individuals and as a company we wholeheartedly support and endorse the Creative Commons’ mission and hope to help contribute to the preservation and enhancement of creative freedom and personal expression."
<br/>
<br/>On releasing its shapefile dataset via the CC0 public domain dedication, Flickr [http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/05/21/flickr-shapefiles-public-dataset-10/ gives the following reasons]:
<blockquote><ul><li>We want people (developers, researchers and anyone else who wants to play) to find new and interesting ways to use the shapefiles and we recognize that, in many cases, this means having access to the entire dataset.</li>
<li>We want people to feel both comfortable and confident using this data in their projects and so we opted for a public domain license so no one would have to spend their time wondering about the issue of licensing. We also think the work that the Creative Commons crew is doing is valuable and important and so we chose to release the shapefiles under the CC0 public domain dedication as a show of support.</li>
<li>We want people to create their own shapefiles and to share them so that other people (including us!) can find interesting ways to use them. We’re pretty sure there’s something to this “shapefile stuff” even if we can’t always put our finger on it so if publishing the dataset will encourage others to do the same then we’re happy to do so.</li></ul></blockquote>

== Technical Details ==

Flickr has implemented 1) a license chooser, 2) the license mark on pages for CC licensed objects, 3) [[CC REL]] metadata, and 4) searching for CC licensed videos.

=== License chooser ===
There are many ways to CC license your content in Flickr. The three main ways are 1) setting a default license for your account to apply the license to all new uploads, 2) batch-licensing all your previous uploads, or 3) selectively licensing some of your photos.

====Setting a default license====
To set a default CC license for your content, follow these directions:

'''1. Go to ''Your account'' and click on the ''Privacy and Permissions'' tab.

[[Image:flickr1.png|border|link=]]

'''2. Scroll down to the ''Defaults for new uploads'' section and look for the following line (you may not already have a default license, but the example below does):'''

[[Image:flickr2.png|border|link=]]

'''3. Click ''Edit'' and you will be taken to a license chooser to select a new default license for new uploads.'''

[[Image:flickr3.png|border|link=]]

====Batch licensing====

After you've set a default license, you might have photos that were uploaded before you set a default license. You can change the licensing status of those images in multiple ways.

'''On the same page you used to set a default license, there is a link to a page where you also have the option to ''Batch edit'' the license for all of your previous uploads. So here you can, for example, CC license all of your previously uploaded photos before you had set a default license.'''

[[Image:flickr4.png|border|link=]]

'''Otherwise, you can select individual sets of photos to change the licensing status of through the [http://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/ Organize view]. On this page, you can drag photos into the screen, select ''Permissions'' and then select ''Change licensing''.

[[Image:flickr5.png|border|link=]]

'''You should be presented with a license chooser:'''

[[Image:flickr6.png|border|link=]]

'''You can also batch edit the licensing status of sets or collections. To do this, open the set or collection in the Organize view and in the ''Batch edit'' menu, select ''Change licensing'':'''

[[Image:flickr7.png|border|link=]]

=== License mark ===
CC license marks appear on pages for specific images.

For example, see [http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/5165089663/ this image].

'''The license mark on that page appears in the right hand column:'''

[[Image:Flickr9.png|border|link=http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/5165089663/]]

That small image and text links to the specific license deed that the photo is under.

'''The CC mark also appears at the bottom of the menu above the image to ''Share this'':'''

[[Image:Flickr10.png|border|link=http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/5165089663/]]

=== Metadata ===

Flickr has implemented a subset of the [[CC REL]] specification by specifying the 'license' and 'cc:license'. Note that both names are contained in a single rel= attribute, which is perfectly valid, although the two terms are equivalent and therefore it isn't necessary to use both. See [[RelLicense|this wiki page]] for more information.

'''For an example, see the source code at the top of [http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/5165089663/ this image's page] for the namespace definitions:'''

<code><nowiki>
<html xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#">
</nowiki></code>

'''And then below where the CC BY license is linked to:'''

<code><nowiki>
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en" rel="license cc:license">Some rights reserved</a>
</nowiki></code>

=== CC search ===
You can search for CC licensed content on Flickr by license.

To explore photos by CC license, visit the [http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ Creative Commons page] and select your desired license.

To search for Creative Commons licensed photos, go to the [http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/? advanced search page] and check the box at the bottom to ''Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content''. Then select the desired license permissions.

[[Image:Flickr8.png|border|link=http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?]]

== Media ==
[http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ Creative Commons licensed photos]

Some collections from Creative Commmons affiliates give a good sense of the type of material collected:

*[http://flickr.com/photos/joi/ Joi Ito]
*[http://flickr.com/photos/fcb/ Fred Benenson]
*[http://flickr.com/photos/itstimhwang Tim Hwang]

[[Category:USA]]

Case Studies/GlaxoSmithKline

2012-11-12T23:55:48Z

DanH: Undo revision 59927 by Mikemollan123 (talk)

{{Case Study
|Description=GlaxoSmithKline is a major pharmaceutical company that has surrendered all copyrights in its malarial data set, which includes more than 13,500 compounds known to be active against malaria.
|Mainurl=http://www.ebi.ac.uk/chemblntd/#tcams_dataset
|Author=ChEMBL-NTD, GlaxoSmithKline
|User_Status=Curator, Creator
|Tag=GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, malaria, disease
|License short name=GNU GPL
|Format=Image, Sound, Text, MovingImage, InteractiveResource, Other, Geodata, Data
|Country=United Kingdom
|Quote=Providing access to this level of information sees GSK set what I would hope to be a new trend that could revolutionise the urgent search for new medicines to tackle malaria. By sharing data, we start to build up a public database of knowledge that should be as powerful as the human genome databases.
|Quote_Attribution=Timothy Wells, Chief Scientific Officer of the Medicines for Malaria Venture (http://www.gsk.com/responsibility/access/rnd-neglected-tropical-diseases.htm)
|Image_Header=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/0/04/Logo-gsk.gif
|Image_attribution=(c) GSK
|Image_license=http://www.gsk.com/terms.htm
|importance=High
|quality=B-Class
|License_short_name=CC0
}}
== Overview ==
One of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world, GlaxoSmithKline has surrendered all copyrights in its malarial data set, which includes more than 13,500 compounds known to be active against malaria. The data set is called Tres Cantos Antimalarial (TCAMS), and is available from the ChEMBL-NTD database, "a repository for Open Access primary screening and medicinal chemistry data directed at neglected diseases - endemic tropical diseases of the developing regions of the Africa, Asia, and the Americas."

== License Usage ==

GlaxoSmithKline has surrendered all copyright in its malaria data set under the CC0 public domain dedication.

== Motivations ==
From GSK's http://www.gsk.com/responsibility/downloads/GSK-CR-2009-full.pdf

<blockquote>"By making this information publicly available, GSK hopes that many other scientists will review this information and analyse the data faster than we could on our own. Hopefully, this will lead to additional research that could help drive the discovery of new medicines. We would also encourage other groups, including academics and pharmaceutical companies, to make their own compounds and related information publicly available.

<br/><br/>This is essentially an example of ‘open source’ being applied to drug discovery. We know that data increases in value when connected with other data and that the more eyes looking at a problem, the more potential solutions may arise."</blockquote>

Research and development (R&D) for diseases prevalent in the developing world are costly and time-consuming and carry less return on investment than R&D for diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, which have a market in the developed world. Since malaria is a disease that primarily affects the developing world, GSK has released malarial data in order to speed the process of R&D, while providing resources that nonprofits and academic institutions don't necessarily have wide access to, such as advanced technologies, facilities for medicinal drug discovery, and manufacturing and distribution expertise. For more information, see GSK's 2009 report on

== Media ==
[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/full/news.2010.20.html Nature - GlaxoSmithKline goes public with malaria data]
<br/>
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/20/glaxo-malaria-drugs-public-domain The Guardian - Glaxo offers free access to potential malaria cures]
<br/>
[http://www.gsk.com/media/malaria.htm GSK's commitment to fighting Malaria]
<br/>
[http://www.gsk.com/media/pressreleases/2010/2010_pressrelease_10009.htm press release]

Photography

2012-11-12T23:50:58Z

DanH:

The internet and technology have changed how people access images, and photographers are responding by employing new methods to reach audiences. These methods include personal websites, social media tools, photo-sharing platforms and communities, and tools such as Creative Commons licenses that enable easy sharing and reuse of creative works.

CC licenses are a flexible way to share images while building on the strong foundation of traditional copyright law. Simply put, Creative Commons licenses allow the shift from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved,” enabling you to share your images under terms of your own choosing. This gives you control over distribution, and the non-exclusivity of the licenses means you can retain all commercial rights if desired.

[[#Photographers_using_CC_licenses|Photographers using CC licenses]] gain new audiences for their work on photo-sharing platforms like [http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons Flickr] and communities like [http://www.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia]. Mohamed Nanabhay, Head of Online, Al Jazeera English, [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/18213 writes]:
:“When launching our [CC] repository, we had thought that it would be a key resource for anyone producing content on the war and that it would primarily be used by other news organisations and documentary filmmakers. What we saw was both surprising and delightful. Soon after posting our first video, Wikipedia editors had extracted images to enhance the encyclopedia entries on the War on Gaza. Soon thereafter educators, filmmakers, video game developers, aid agencies and music video producers all used and built upon our footage.”

Wikipedia is a heavily-trafficked website with over 400 million unique visitors a month. Flickr contains over 200 million CC-licensed photos, establishing it as the Web’s single largest source of CC-licensed content.

In 2008, DigitalPhotoPro published an [http://www.digitalphotopro.com/business/creative-commons.html article on the use of CC licenses by professional photographers] with advice for those thinking of using CC themselves.

==Photographers using CC licenses==

===[[The_Power_of_Open/Text#Jonathan_Worth|Jonathan Worth]]===
:“Creative Commons enables me to use existing architecture really smoothly and to address the digital natives’ social media habits. The mode of information is the same, but the mode of distribution has changed. We don’t have all the answers, but CC lets me choose my ﬂavor and helps me take advantage of the things working against me.”

British photographer Jonathan Worth’s work hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. He teaches photography at Coventry University in the U.K. He has photographed actors Colin Firth, Rachel Hunter, Jude Law and Heath Ledger. He is also one of an emerging group of photographers experimenting with sustainable working practices for professional image makers in the digital age. Jonathan Worth has been featured in:
*[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8623680/How-the-Power-of-Open-can-benefit-photographers.html The Telegraph] - How the Power of Open can benefit photographers
*[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13961051 BBC News] - "Photographer Jonathan Worth explained that Creative Commons allowed him to sell his work for commercial use while still giving it free to individuals who wanted it for other reasons."
*[http://thepowerofopen.org/ The Power of Open] - Stories of creators sharing knowledge, art, & data using Creative Commons

===[[Case_Studies/Lan_Bui|Lan Bui]]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/Lan_Bui|?Image Header|link=none}}
Lan Bui "makes media." From photography of tech celebrities (Veronica Belmont, Zadi Diaz, Casey McKinnon) and The Ninja to videos for professionals and events (Comic Con and Pixelodeon), Lan (with help from his brother Vu) makes them all from start to finish. Lan echoes the thoughts of other artists using Creative Commons; the idea that your work is, in a way, an advertisement for yourself and future work. Lan expresses this in this way: "I think that people pay me for my time and talent, not for the actual images I deliver."
</div>

===[[Case_Studies/Monkeyc.net|Monkeyc.net]]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/Monkeyc.net|?Image Header|link=none}}
Monkeyc.net is the moniker of John Harvey, a Brisbane-based former photojournalist who licenses his Flickr photo stream under Creative Commons. John is an active member of the Flickr community, having first uploaded a photo on 26 September 2004 and now sporting a collection of close to 1,000 images, and encourages others to engage likewise. Several of John’s photographs have been featured on Flickr’s ‘Explore’ page, as an indication of their popularity in the Flickr community.
</div>

===Vinoth Chandar===
Vinoth Chandar is a professional photographer who releases many of his photographs under the [[Creative Commons Attribution]] licence, saying that "I use [the] Attribution Creative Commons licence for all my photos because I want everybody to use my photo and credit me ... This way, my photos reach every corner of the world without any effort from my side except taking the photos and uploading it to Flickr."<ref>http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-12/16/creative-commons-gallery</ref>

One example he used of the exposure provided by free culture licensing was the use of one of his photos for the cover of a popular Italian magazine. "I am an Indian and how else in the world can an Indian photographer expect his photo to be published in an Italian magazine? CC licence made this possible."<ref>http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-12/16/creative-commons-gallery</ref>

==Enforceability of CC licenses in photography==
CC licenses have been upheld in several [[Case_Law|court cases]] around the world. A few of these cases pertain specifically to CC-licensed images.

*In [[Curry_v._Audax |Curry v. Audax]], Adam Curry, a former MTV VJ and one of the pioneers of podcasting, published photos onto his Flickr account under a BY-NC-SA license. A Dutch tabloid reprinted four of the photos in a story about the Curry family's public persona verses real private life. Curry sued the tabloid for violating the portrait rights of his family and for copyright violation over the improper user of his Flickr photos. The Dutch court held that, in the future, the tabloid could not use any of the photos from Flickr in the future unless under the terms of the photos' CC license or with permission from Curry.
*In [[Gerlach_vs._DVU|Gerlach vs. DVU]], Gerlach took a picture of the German politician Thilo Sarrazin at a public event and published it online under the Creative Commons license BY SA 3.0 Unported. Later the DVU, a German political party used the picture on their website without the plaintiff's name, the license notice or any other requirement of the license. The applicant sent a notice and takedown letter to which the party didn't react. Subsequently the applicant sought preliminary injunction before the Disctrict Court of Berlin against the unauthorized publication of the picture. The District Court of Berlin granted the injunction because the applicant had successfully established prima-facie evidence of authorship, of the licensing and of the breach of the license.
*In [[TA_3560/09,_3561/09,_Avi_Re%27uveni_v._Mapa_inc._%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C:_%D7%9C%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%94,_%D7%91%D7%99%D7%94%D7%9E%22%D7%A9_%D7%90%D7%9B%D7%A3_%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%90%D7%99%D7%99%D7%98%D7%99%D7%91_%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A1 |Avi Re’uveni v. Mapa inc.]], plaintiffs uploaded photographs to Flickr and and offered them under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. The defendant made a collage from the plaintiffs’ and other photographs and sold them without attribution. The court found the defendant guilty of copyright infringement. The defendant claimed ignorance of the copyright and license, but the court found that this did not matter.

==Photo-sharing sites that have enabled CC licenses==

===[[Case_Studies/Flickr|Flickr]]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/Flickr|?Image Header|link=none}}
Flickr was one of the first major online communities to incorporate Creative Commons licensing options into its user interface, giving photographers around the world the easy ability to share photos on terms of their choosing. As the Flickr community grew, so did the number of CC-licensed images — currently there are well over 200 million on the site — establishing Flickr as the Web’s single largest source of CC-licensed content.
</div>

===[[Case_Studies/DeviantART|DeviantART]]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/DeviantART|?Image Header|link=none}}
deviantART is an online community dedicated to showcasing art as prints, videos and literature. CC license options are built into deviantArt's UI, allowing users to set the permissions they want their works to carry. Naturally, different users choose different options for their works, including All Rights Reserved.
</div>

===[http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/22882 Fotopedia]===
Fotopedia is a breathtaking application for the iPhone and iPad. The app builds on the concept of a coffee table book, updating and enhancing the browsing experience for the web. This project is possible thanks to Creative Commons, as over 18,000 of the pictures in Fotopedia Heritage book are under one of the CC licenses. The pictures come from all around the world; as individual photographers and organizations license their high quality photos under Creative Commons, the book will only grow as a community contributed and shareable resource.

===[[Case_Studies/National_Library_of_Australia_'Click_and_Flick'|National Library of Australia: 'Click and Flick']]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/National_Library_of_Australia_'Click_and_Flick'|?Image Header|link=none}}
'Click and Flick' is a National Library of Australia (NLA) initiative to open their online pictorial gateway, PictureAustralia, to contributions from the Australian public. PictureAustralia encourages people to make their material available on the archive under the CC licenses, as part of two dedicated Flickr image pools: ‘PictureAustralia: Ourtown’ and ‘PictureAustralia: People, Places and Events’.
</div>

===[[Case_Studies/Newsbank_Image|Newsbank Image]]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/Newsbank_Image|?Image Header|link=none}}
Newsbank Image is one of South Korea's largest and most comprehensive photo-archives. The photograph archive website provides images produced by Media companies, photographers as well as web-friendly versions containing watermarks, original images, all which maintain the marking of original creators. Users can choose to upload their photos under CC licenses.
</div>

===[[Case_Studies/Culture.si|Culture.si]]===
<div class="smimg">{{#show: Case_Studies/Culture.si|?Image Header|link=none}}
A comprehensive online guide to Slovene culture, Culture.si covers contemporary art, culture, and heritage in Slovenia. Over 2,300 articles in English and the fastest growing independent free image bank (currently over 1,500 images) are offered for reuse under Creative Commons licenses.
</div>

==How To Publish photos in an online community==
One way to increase visibility and access to your photos is to share it with an existing community that has enabled CC licensing, making it easy for you to indicate the license along with other information, such as who to attribute. In addition, search engines like Google and Yahoo! will index your work as CC licensed if the metadata is properly attached. See [[Publish/Images]] for more info.

==Finding CC-licensed photos==
Thanks to the machine-readability of CC licenses, CC-licensed images can be found via:

*[http://images.google.com/advanced_image_search?hl=en Google Advanced Image Search] by specifying options under "Usage Rights"
*[http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/advanced?ei=UTF-8 Yahoo! Advanced Image Search] by specifying options under "Creative Commons License"
*It appears that Yahoo Advanced Image Search no longer offers this option. Can anyone else confirm this?
*[http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=179622 Google Docs], where Google Image Search has been integrated
*[http://search.creativecommons.org/ CC Search Portal], which is not a search engine, but a tool that offers convenient access to search services provided by independent organizations, such as Flickr, Google, and Wikimedia Commons (media repository for articles featured on Wikipedia).

==Related resources==
*[[Journalism|CC in Journalism]]
*[[CC_Factsheet|CC Factsheet]]

==References==
<references>

Case Studies/Blender Foundation

2012-11-12T23:43:32Z

DanH: reverting changes by Humtum and Angkuh.

{{Case Study
|importance=High
|quality=A-Class
|Description=The Blender Foundation, lead by Ton Roosendaal, supports the development of the Open Source 3D animation program Blender along with creative works showcasing the ability of both the program and the community of creators.
|Quote=If you give away cool stuff, what you get in return is always more!
|Quote_Attribution=Ton Roosendaal
|Image_Header=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/3/3f/Poster_bunny_small_400.jpg
|Image_attribution=Big Buck Bunny Poster by [http://www.bigbuckbunny.org Blender Foundation]
|Image_license=http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
|Mainurl=http://www.blender.org
|Author=Ton Roosendaal
|User_Status=Creator
|Tag=Open Source, 3D, Animation
|License_short_name=CC BY
|License=http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
|Format=Image, MovingImage
|Country=Netherlands
}}
== Overview ==

Ton Roosendaal is the lead developer of the Open Source 3D animation program [http://www.blender.org/ Blender]. Blender is a highly popular platform to produce 3D renderings and is used by The History Channel and also for storyboarding the Spider-man 2 movie. Along with being the lead developer Ton is also the Chairman of the [http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/ Blender Foundation], the non-profit that founds development and animation projects in the [http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/ Blender Community]. The Foundation is funded by donations and the sales of 3D rendering training materials from its online store. These founds allow the foundation to support Ton Roosendaal and a small staff to work on Blender development full-time, production of short films which both spur development and showcase the capabilities of Blender, and put on the Blender Conference.

Ton was the original lead developer of Blender when he founded the animation studio NeoGeo in 1988. After 7 years of development it was decided that to continue improving the product it was required to perform a complete rewrite of the software. Thus, in 1995, the development for what is now known as Blender began. Ton started a spin-off of NeoGeo in 1998 called Not a Number (NaN) which had its goal to develop and distribute a powerful 3D tool for free. The business model hinged on providing commercial products and services for Blender. However, after disappointing sales results of the Blender Publisher product in 2001 the then current investors decided to shutdown the company and thus development of Blender.

The Blender community, however, did not want to see such a powerful tool disappear. Ton started the Blender Foundation which negotiated with the investors to allow the releasing of the Blender source code under the GNU General Public License if they were paid a sum of 100,000 EUR. The foundation raised that amount from the support of the community and the Free Blender campaign. On Sunday October 13, 2002 the Blender source code was released to the public.

The Blender Foundation has since then supported the development of the software and also the production of creative projects to showcase both the Blender software and the skilled creators in the community. In 2005 the Foundation started Project Orange to produce the Open Movie “Elephants Dream” which was greeted to wide praise. The entire project of “Elephants Dream” was released under a Creative Commons Attribution license on March 24, 2006. This included all 7 gigabytes of data which was used to create the final movie. Following the success of Project Orange the Blender Foundation began Project Peach in October of 2007 to create a “funny and furry” movie. Big Buck Bunny was released on April 10, 2008 to, again, wide acclaim. An Open Game based on the Big Buck Bunny movie was started as Project Apricot in February of 2008.

== License Usage ==

The entire production files of both Project Orange (Elephants Dream) and Project Peach (Big Buck Bunny) are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

== Motivations ==

When asked about the relationship between the Open Source community of Blender development and the creators using it for the such projects as Project Orange and Project Peach Ton writes, “The relation is especially important when projects are involved for documentation or support, or Open Movie projects like we do for improving Blender. The fact people can share content to learn from or to build on, is a typical community-based 'shared self-interest' thing.”

However, the use of the Creative Commons license was not clear decision back in 2005 when Project Orange was began. Ton and others in the community realized how important of a license it will become in the future for creative works. However, reservations still surfaced:
“Just the week before the release we were a bit nervous going for CC-by only... for artists it's not easy to let your baby go and have other people mess with it, completely unlimited! In the end, looking back, it's has proven to be only cool. Hardly no abuse happened, and the freedom only inspired very interesting use.”

All material for Project Orange and Project Peach were released under the Creative Commons Attribution license and this decision was made with the Golden Rule in mind as Ton states, “Since we got sponsored by our community, we should give them back the project results in a way we would have liked to receive it ourselves... meaning, freedom to re-use, also for commercial work.”

After experiencing first had what it is like to develop and release a project under a permissive Creative Commons license Ton has one piece of advice for those choosing a license for their work: “Just go for it, don't be afraid of sharing. The incidental (and inevitable) abuses will never outweigh the benefits.”

== Media ==

[[Image:Creative_Commons_BBB.png|500px|The Big Buck Bunny characters promoting CC]]

This wallpaper was made by Steren Giannini using the ''Big Buck Bunny'' characters. ''Bug Buck Bunny'' is the second open movie made at the ''Blender Institute''. All the movie files are available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. These files are of a real professional quality, they allow many users to understand better how to make quality models and computer generated movies.