Last week Wikimedia Commons reached two million media files (images, audio, video), many of which are available under liberal CC licenses.

Wikimedia Commons is “a central repository for freely licensed photographs, diagrams, animations, music, spoken text, video clips, and media of all sorts that are useful for any Wikimedia project.”

While Wikimedia Commons is surely one of the premier repositories of free cultural works on the web, it does live in the shadow of Wikipedia, which it (mainly) serves. In the words of Commons editor Brianna Laugher:

We live with being identified via Wikipedia, it’s like being Albert Einstein’s sister.

We slightly furthered this over-identification in the recent announcement of public discussion of version 3.01 of CC licenses in which we thanked the Wikipedia community for raising concerns about version 3.0’s treatment of moral rights. The concern was actually raised on Wikimedia Commons. Our characterization was not inaccurate, but lacked precision necessary to give full credit where deserved.

So thanks (and congratulations) to Wikimedia Commons!