2016 is almost at a close, and our global communities are as busy as ever. Around the world, diverse groups are working together to create meaningful connections and light up the commons.

The Creative Commons Awesome Fund, a series of mini-grants intended to support our global communities, supported FRANCOCAR this year. FRANCOCAR is a range of events and activities in West Africa (Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Senegal) to promote open source software, digitization, and Creative Commons licenses. Follow #francocar if you want to stay in…

Presentation of Chile’s updated Open Government Action Plan by Werner Westermann, CC BY. Werner Westermann is a fellow from our first Institute for Open Leadership, held in San Francisco in January 2015. He works at Library of the National Congress of Chile, and is involved in open education projects and advocacy in Chile and internationally.…

Marisa Anderson performs "Chimes" at the Into the Light album release show in Portland, OR. Photo by Jody Darby CC BY NC

I have been a fan of Marisa Anderson’s music since discovering her albums at the legendary Chapel Hill radio station WXYC, where my show usually ran from from 4-8AM. At 4 in the morning in a windowless studio, the title of Anderson’s 2011 release “The Golden Hour” seemed apropos. I would listen to her virtuosic,…

WOC in Tech Stock Photos CC-BY

In the last year, #wocintechchat has provided Twitter chats, community dialogue, scholarships, and partnerships to provide more opportunities for women of color working in technology.

Free Your Stuff screencap by Erik Moeller, CC-BY

Thanks to the free culture movement, vast knowledge repositories like Wikipedia and StackExchange allow content to be re-used freely and built upon, and many major sites offer Creative Commons licensing as part of their user interfaces.

Joost de Cock in homemade shirt, jeans, and shoes. CC-by-SA-NC

The delightfully quirky sewing site Make my Pattern.com is the work of self-proclaimed “sewcialist” Joost de Cock, a Belgian designer with a flair for fashion. When he started Make my Pattern, de Cock set out to solve a major issue for amateur sewers: patterns fit best when hand-drafted, but hand-drafting is inaccessible to most hobbyists.…

“We need to talk,” begins the first letter from the organizers of “Letters for Black Lives,” a new writing project aimed at opening up intercultural and inter-generational dialogue about the Black Lives Matter movement.

Prince performing in Brussels during the Hit N Run Tour in 1986, CC-by-2.0 Today at Copyright On!, Britton Payne discussed the unique copyright situation surrounding Prince’s estate. This potentially long and bitter battle could shape the future of music copyright to come. Prince fought a number of legendary copyright battles, which makes this current fight…

On May 22nd, more than four years after his detention and six months after his disappearance, Bassel Khartabil (Arabic: باسل خرطبيل‎) will turn 35 years old. Bassel’s imprisonment by the Assad regime is a brutal human rights violation and the continued lack of answers about his fate is a hindrance to the fight for free…