On the OpenAttribute Launch

I am thrilled that the OpenAttribute project launched this week. It’s been part of what Mark Surman calls Drumbeat’s “perfect storm”: in one week, we announced a multi-year partnership with the Knight Foundation to embed open web technologists in newsrooms; launched the new version of Drumbeat.org, highlighting the best of new open social technologies; and are throwing the first Hackasaurus events, in collaboration with the New Youth City Learning Network and the Public Library—teaching web skills to kids in innovate, fun ways.

All that, one week!

The launch of OpenAttribute may seem like just another awesome proof point for Drumbeat this week, but for me it’s more significant. The OpenAttribute team—chiefly Molly Kleinman, Laura Hilliger, Pat Lockley, Nathan Yergler—have shown us a model collaboration. All Drumbeat projects should work this well, and I’ve learned a lot from this team.

In a nutshell, OpenAttribute is a project to make Creative Commons attribution easier. Giving credit where it’s due is the first requirement of using open content, but it’s surprisingly not very well integrated into the open web platform. This is one discussion emerged at the Learning, Freedom and the Web festival last October. Why not make it easier? How might we do that?

The answer would be a combination of direct outreach for creators and users of CC content, showing them how to add and use license metadata—along with the development of some browser add-ons to facilitate the process.

The project came together shortly after the festival, with an initial team that had a lot of library science and user interaction experience, but no development muscle. That’s normally a problem for Drumbeat projects with strong ideas but no magnetic, technical core. Thankfully, we were able to bring Nathan Yergler (a Drumbeat festival attendee and, heywaddayaknow, CTO of Creative Commons) on board. Nathan had long been working on a project called MozCC, and later mentored a Google Summer of Code project meant to supersede it. But it needed the right support and environment,  and a team to give it rocket fuel. Bang—Drumbeat collision.

Working with Nathan, a team of volunteers helped improve the design of the software, test for bugs, and engineer a release. Other developers—namely, rockstar Pat Lockley—joined in and ported the Firefox add-on to Chrome and Opera. The team launched the product this week, getting mentions in Boing Boing, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and many more.

Not bad for an all volunteer team working across the world (Molly and Nathan in the U.S., Pat in the U.K., and Laura in Germany). And it’s just the beginning. The team has its sights set on plugins for popular CMS systems and more direct outreach to CC creators and users.

Making open content a technical part of the web stack is a big priority for Creative Commons. Here’s another step toward that future from a team that coalesced through the power of community—almost like magic.