History
Founding
Creative Commons was founded in 2001 with the generous support from the Center for the Public Domain and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
People
Creative Commons is led by a Board of Directors comprised of thought leaders, education experts, technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and philanthropists. The CC Affiliate Network consists of 100+ affiliates working in over 79 jurisdictions to support and promote CC activities around the world. CC maintains a small, geographically distributed staff.
Creative Commons licenses
In December 2002, Creative Commons released its first set of copyright licenses for free to the public. Creative Commons developed its licenses — inspired in part by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) — alongside a Web application platform to help you license your works freely for certain uses, on certain conditions; or dedicate your works to the public domain.
Creative Commons licensed works have spread around the world. As of 2015 there are over 1 billion CC licensed works online. The license suite has been continuously improved, and ported to over 50 jurisdictions.
Areas of work
Creative Commons has been engaged in work and projects in various areas, including education, science, culture, public policy, and more.
Milestones
2001
- Creative Commons founded.
2002
- Version 1.0 licenses released.
2003
- Approximately 1 million licenses in use.
2004
- Estimated 4.7 million licensed works by the end of the year.
- Version 2.0 released.
2005
- Estimated 20 million works.
- Version 2.5 released.
- Science projects at Creative Commons launched.
2006
- Estimated 50 million licensed works.
2007
- Estimated 90 million licensed works.
- Version 3.0 released.
- 5th birthday of CC licenses. Event featured performance by Gilberto Gil.
- Education projects launch.
2008
- Estimated 130 million CC licensed works.
- Lawrence Lessig steps down as CEO, replaced by Joi Ito.
- New Nine Inch Nails album released under CC.
- CC launches fundraising campaign with support from Jesse Dylan and Jonathan Coulton.
2009
- Estimated 350 million CC licensed works.
- CC0 Public Domain Dedication launched.
- Wikipedia migrates to CC Attribution-ShareAlike as its main content license.
2010
2011
- CC Global Summit in Warsaw, Poland.
2012
- 10th anniversary of CC licenses!
2013
- Version 4.0 released.
- CC Global Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2014
- Ryan Merkley becomes CEO.
- Estimated 880 million CC licensed works.
2015
- Estimated 1 billion CC licensed works.
- CC Global Summit in Seoul, South Korea.
- CC logo acquired by MoMA.