p2pnet.net News Feature:- Students at IT-Universitetet i København (IT-University, Copenhagen, Denmark) have come up with a truly unique concept and a way of sharing unequalled anywhere. And it’s the epitome of ‘open source,’ ‘creative’ and ‘license’ !

Vores Øl, a “medium strong beer (6% vol) with a deep golden red color and an original but familiar taste,” is definitely for surfers because:

A) It’s the first open source Linux of beers; and
B) It’s brewed with that extra ingredient – guarana.

Guarana? South American guarana beans are a, “natural source of energy and health,” say the brewers on their web site. “Their stimulating effect nicely balances the drowsiness that is associated with beer. (The caffeine contents in each beer, approx. 35 mg, is lower than in a cup of coffee so you shouldn’t have to worry about possible side effects.)”

Hmm. So this means it’s probably a beer look-alike but it’s not real beer. Right?

“You can’t buy it in stores (at least not yet) and by the time you read this we have probably drank all the beer we brewed in the first batch (it tasted good)” say the brewers, but it’s still the real deal!

So where does Creative Commons come in?

“Somewhere in the world someone might be using our recipe right now, and as long as they publish their version of the recipe they are free to sell it in a store near you,” say the Vores Øl creators.“

“The recipe and the whole brand of Our Beer is published under a Creative Commons license, which basically means that anyone can use our recipe to brew the beer or to create a derivative of our recipe.

“You are free to earn money from Our Beer, but you have to publish the recipe under the same license (e.g. on your website or on our forum) and credit our work. You can use all our design and branding elements, and are free to change them at will provided you publish your changes under the same license (’Attribution & Share Alike’).”

Can large companies market Vores Øl?

Yup. As long as they comply with the CC licence and publish their version of the recipe under the same Creative Commons license, the idea being to, “keep the beer ‘free’ so everyone has the freedom to improve the recipe based on the work of others”.

By way of an historical note, the “Vores Øl Group” comprises students at the IT-University in Copenhagen who developed the beer in collaboration with Superflex, “as an experiment in applying modern open source ideas and methods on a traditional real-world product (beer)”.

Why beer?

Why not?

“We all like beer, and as an added bonus there is a legendary quote used to explain the concept of free software (now usually referred to as open source software):

” ‘Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer’.”

But that’s not all.

The piece de resistance is the Sound Bazaar, a forum for sharing sounds and music related to Vores Øl. And it is, of course, under a Creative Commons license.

Now do you get it, John Dvorak?

Definitely stay tuned.

Thanks again, Lars : )

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

See:-
do you get it – Is Creative Commons dumb?, p2pnet, July 22, 2005

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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