Happy Birthday Creative Commons!

I attended the Creative Commons 5th birthday party in Berlin this evening. One of our new students had distributed leaflets in the lab, and since I have been interested in free software and now open documents, I decided to drop by.

The student was rather shocked that I did actually attend - and knew some others attending. He tried saying that he thought it was great that one of his professors was interested in such modern stuff - I just smiled instead of telling him that I've been interested in this since before he was born.

I was surprised, however, at how very many projects there were, and that there are now 42 countries participating. Many countries are pouring real money in the project, paying people salaries to sort out the legal aspects and then making it popular.

Even the NDR, a German local TV station, has made some experimental films available under CC license (Press release, Download page).

There were lots of presents thrown out to the attendees, I didn't get one of the cool T-Shirts, but I did nab a CD with open music put out by the student union in Marburg. The cake was horribly sweet (or maybe it just didn't go well with the Club Mate I was drinking).

I left when the music started. It's not really my favorite kind of music, you can't speak with others for the noise, and old people have to get to bed at proper times.....