Microsoft teams with Creative Commons
Marshall Kirkpatrick
34 comments »
How different are things now that Bill Gates at Microsoft has made his symbolic hand-off of power? Microsoft tonight announced a new partnership with Creative Commons, the organization dedicated to providing content producers a legal alternative to “all rights reserved” copyright law, to offer a new tool for easy insertion of Creative Commons licenses into works created with Microsoft Office.
For more info and background on Creative Commons, check out this interview I did off-site several months ago with the organization’s CTO, Mike Linksvayer.
not bad, thats good to see them working together, the BIG microsoft and the small not for profit
Pretty good move by Microsoft. Office 12 is remarkable and it would be great to have something like creative commons part of it. Great boost for their service.
Smart move, the Creative Commons liscence rules
Can somebody perhaps enlighten me how this would be useful for the average user of Microsoft Word?
Also, what about companies? I don’t think companies would like proposals being issued with a CC license inadvertantly…
Chris,
”
Ofcourse, it would be an open choice for the users.
I still don’t get it - how a user would use it. So I open Word, I write a poem, and I want to apply a CC license to it. then what? Put the .doc as a download from my website? Why not just post the poem on my website and have the website already CC licensed?
I think it’s fair to assume that it’s not really intended for those savvy enough to do what you suggest Chris. I’d assume it’ll be embedded in the .doc itself, so the license goes with it as the document is transfered, in any way.
Sounds like a feature added just for press coverage though, imo.
Domain creativecommons.es now redirect for http://es.creativecommons.org, for spanish CC comunity.
More information in http://blog.ferca.com/2006/06/.....ns-espana/
and
http://es.creativecommons.org/.....commonses/
Is it just me or has hell frozen over?
Please note that we actually started development on this project long before Bill Gates announced that he planned to leave Microsoft (in two years). While it makes for a good story, there is no correlation between the release of the Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office and Bill Gates announcement to leave Microsoft.
And if you’re interested I’ll be posting more about the development of the add-in on my blog. The story starts here: http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/a.....41202.aspx
It is a trivial concession. Generates more value for Microsoft than for the CC.
When is Microsoft going to make their file formats friendly for Open Souce (CC) software ?
“Please note that we actually started development on this project long before Bill Gates announced that he planned to leave Microsoft (in two years). ”
I was going to comment on the same point. Kind of obvious, yes? Very surprised to see TechCrunch say that - Mike etc are usually more savvy.
I for one am not surprised this has been in the works for some time. Lessig was blogging frantically last winter looking for more donors to Creative Commons so it could keep its tax-exempt status, and Lessig noted on his blog that his last-minute financial savior was Microsoft. This relationship ain’t new.
Of course the work on this was started well before the Gates departure - but if said departure is seen by history as a turning point, the public announcement of a CC license tool will be discussed as an event on this side of the line. It’s all symbolic of course, but I think the symbolism is interesting. Does the Gates announcement represent a paradigm shift on the part of the company? I think that if things keep going in this direction then it can be said that it does.
Good initiative on the part of Microsoft.
I actually just added a Creative Commons licence to my blog ‘Serge the Concierge’ yesterday after signing up with the UK based ‘Scoopt Words’ syndication service.
They suggested it actually.
I will see if ‘Scoopt Words’ works better for me than ‘BlogBurst’.
You can actually use both services.
Time will tell!
Serge
Biz:
http://www.njconcierges.com
Blog
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
Yet more specious “post-Gates” correlations. You say in your comment “It’s all symbolic of course” but that doesn’t jibe with the post itself, where you clearly state that things are different now that Gates is gone and that is why this CC thing came about. You heavily imply that if Gates were still “on board” (which he is, by the way) that the CC thing would never have happened.
bokee linke is dead.. it should be “http://www.bokee.com/” with http://www.
TechCrunch Japan team…(yasu)
“When is Microsoft going to make their file formats friendly for Open Souce (CC) software ?”
Um, did you miss the announcement that the Office 12 file formats are fully documented XML? It doesn’t get more transparent than that. And Office 11 has supported XML document formats since 2003.
I see it as an extrange movement in Microsoft. the utility for the final user is not clear, as many people have said here, and the same for companies.
In my opinion the clear winners in this deal, is Creative Commons, that will be known by every office user, until now, is a completely unknown for the general public.