Developer Aids and Libraries

License metadata validation web service

Creative Commons offers web services for integrating license selection into applications, and we have a License Metadata Validator. How about mashing the two of them up? A web service which allowed applications to validate license metadata would allow applications to integrate another aspect of CC licensing with minimal effort. Please see License metadata validation web service.

CC Web Service Wrappers

We currently offer language-specific wrappers for the Creative Commons Web Services in Python, Java and PHP. Help make it easier for other developers to integrate license selection by writing a wrapper library in your language of choice. Lisp, anyone? A successful implementation will include a small driver application which demonstrates how the wrapper can be used for license selection. See Web Services Client Implementations for information on our existing implementations. Please see CC Web Service Wrappers.

APIs for Creative Commons license metadata

We provide RDF metadata for each our our licenses and the public domain dedication. Many developers will find it easiest to access this metadata via a programming language-specifc API. cclicense.php is an example of such an API for PHP web developers. Ada, C++, E, Java, Lisp, ML, Perl, Ruby, Smalltalk, Tcl (and many more!) are all up for grabs. Your wrapper should also include a small driver program to demonstrate how it can be used to pull license information. Bonus points if your implementation can dynamically discover and wrap new licenses using the Creative Commons metadata vocabulary. Please see APIs for Creative Commons license metadata.

Companion File metadata specification

It is impractical to embed metadata in some file formats, so we need a specification for a "companion" metadata file that would define license and other metadata information. Please see Companion File metadata specification.

Embedding Specifications for various filetypes

This is the place for embedding licenses and metadata within existing file formats such as MP3, OGG, XML, SMIL, SVG, etc.

Operating System Support For Creative Commons Metadata

Recent and upcoming operating systems will have built-in support for application-level metadata. See Gnome, Vista, and Tiger. How can Creative Commons take advantage of these technologies to enable CC-aware search and applications on the next generation desktop? Wanted: research briefs on how to expose CC license info for objects in each major OS or framework. Support for the external metadata files should be included. Please see the detail page: Operating System Support For Creative Commons Metadata.

License metadata validation web application

This application should work much like the W3C RDF Validation Service. It may even re-use some of the same code. Instead of parsing RDF from a text input box or URL and displaying represented triples, the license metadata version should extract RDF potentially embedded in HTML from a text input box or URL, parse the RDF, and display license and work properties instead of raw RDF triples. Please see the detail page: License metadata validation web application.