Summer of Code application period open

Mike Linksvayer, May 2nd, 2006

Google is accepting student proposals for its Summer of Code program yesterday through May 8. Student signup starts here.

Creative Commons has a page for SoC proposal ideas. In the last few days Jon Phillips has greatly expanded our Developer Challenges section, another place to look for proposal ideas.

“Boy Who Never Slept” film trailer offered under CC

Eric Steuer, May 1st, 2006

Filmmaker Solomon Rothman has released the trailer to his upcoming movie Boy Who Never Slept online. Both the trailer and the full-length film are being offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. Rothman shot, starred in, and directed the movie, which centers on the friendship between an insomniac writer and a girl he meets online. From the press release:

“I’m very excited about how powerful the internet is as a distribution source for movies, and how new technologies like Google video have empowered amateur filmmakers with the ability to reach a large audience and have their work be accessible to everyone. That’s powerful,” says Solomon Rothman.

ccSalon article at iCommons.org

Eric Steuer, May 1st, 2006

iCommons.org has published a very cool article about Creative Commons Salon. Give it a read — there are some helpful hints about starting a CC Salon in your community.

Enderrock: Música Lliure

Eric Steuer, May 1st, 2006

The April issue of Catalonian music magazine Enderrock includes lengthy article about Creative Commons and comes with a free CD entitled Música Lliure, which features 19 amazing CC-licensed songs from acts like Cheb Balowski, Dijous Paella, and Orxata Sound System. There’s also a bonus track, Gilberto Gil’s “Oslodum,” which also appeared on the Wired CD. Starting this month, you’ll be able to download all of the tracks from Música Lliure at culturalliure.org. Incredibly exciting stuff!

Get Your Designs Ready

Mia Garlick, May 1st, 2006

Inspired by the SXSW Big Bag Competition, iCommons and Creative Commons announce a contest to design this year’s iCommons Summit bag. With the theme of this year’s event: ‘Towards a Global Digital Information Commons’ and workshops on open creativity, knowledge, science and innovation, we’re looking for designs that are creative, visually arresting and informative. The winner will receive a scholarship to attend the June iCommons Summit, so get your friends and communities involved and they could be attending this amazing event in Rio de Janeiro. The deadline for submissions is 9:00 p.m. South African Standard Time, May 15, 2006.

Free? Open? Content? Expression?

Mia Garlick, May 1st, 2006

In the software world, the concepts of “free software” and “open source” have defined meanings. With the development of licenses governing content, the terms “free content” and “open content” have become commonly used but without clear definitions. An initiative has been started by Erik Möller and Benjamin Mako Hill to define what “free content” or “free expression” (the very word content is itself up for debate in this process) means and which licenses satisfy this definition. There is also a contest to devise a logo that can be attached to works or licenses which are free under the new definition.

The full announcement for this undertaking is here.