So I’m sure we’ve all heard the refrain that free and open content licensing impoverishes artists and creators even further and/or is the bastion of those who don’t want to make money from their creativity. While there have been several examples already that disprove these contentions, a new wiki has been established to build an online resource of innovative business models. Later, the plan is the publish this resource in hardcopy as The OpenBusiness Guide. Examples and ideas of open business models, being entrepreneurial ideas which are built around openness, free services and free access, are invited and will then be ‘peer reviewed’ by comments and through collaboration with other contributors to the wiki.

The goal of OpenBusiness is to analyze and explain models by which people can share their knowledge and creativity with others whilst at the same time enjoying the more traditional incentives of profit, individual success and societal advancement.

OpenBusiness is a collaboration between, among others, Christian Ahlert at Michael Young Foundation in the United Kingdom, Heather Ford from the Link Center in South Africa and Ronaldo Lemos from FGV Law School in Brazil. Christian, Heather and Ronaldo are also involved in the Creative Commons projects in their respective countries. The project is supported by the Open Society Institute, Arts Council England and International Development Research Centre in Canada.

OpenBusiness may serve as an example of what it stands for in many respects – both as an example of the benefits of open collaboration and as an example of a work freely licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license that may also generate revenues.