Unfortunately, I like open source in my open source.

As a person who’s blog is in bad need of some design — any design — I noticed with interest Derek K. Miller’s article “Free open source web designs“:

OSWD is a bunch of open-source web designs, most of a bloggy style. There are more than 2000 of them so far, and you can contribute your own—at least if you have better web design skills than I do.

Looks like it has been around 5 years, and Francis suggests it “has grown to be the premier site on the internet for the sharing of web designs.” Of course, for my own evil purposes I want http://themes.wordpress.net/ to be the premier site for open source web designs, but I’m happy to find more great resources.

I was disappointed by what I found.

Immediately, I was struck by the irony of “using the OSWD design itself [...] is not allowed without written consent from OSWD”.

That page starts with “you can download any …”, but never talks about the real freedoms of open source:

Free Redistribution
Source Code
Derived Works

and so on, which are derive from the The Free Software Definition:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

“The designs distributed at OSWD each carry their own separate open source license which is chosen by the designer when it is submitted to the site.” Turns out I have to download a theme to find out the license. OK, that is a lacking experience (design), but I will give it a go.

I downloaded the top five most downloaded designs: RedTie by alexisc22, andreas01 by Andreas, Delicious Fruit by Dieter, Rounded_2 by jedignork, and FunkyCoolBlue by VirtualFunction. Not one of them including licensing information. The famous WordPress theme designer comes the closest with Andreas Viklund with at the top of andreas01.css:

andreas01 – an open source xhtml/css website layout by Andreas Viklund (http://andreasviklund.com). Made for OSWD.org, free to use as-is for any purpose as long as the proper credits are given for the original design work. For design assistance and support, contact me through my website or through http://oswd.org/email.phtml?user=Andreas

The other ones pretty much had nothing.

Lets look at another site, http://www.opensourcedesign.com – “Open Source Design”. That also sounds promising. Hmm, no way to add a theme. I flipped through quite a few and they all are Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 by FreeCSSTemplates.org. Creative Commons Attribution is a great license, but it will never be an open source license, because “you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor” (emphasis mine). By requiring attribution as the author specifies, you might affect the experience (the interface) of the resulting site. So no open source design in sight there either.

Now do you see why we are such a moody bunch? I better go see if I can help get http://themes.wordpress.net/ accepting submissions again.

When ever I start thinking about licensing and it being the suck, I think to Lawrence Lessig‘s keynote presentation at the annual Open Source Convention (OSCON) made on July 24, 2002. My favorite parts are:

• Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
• The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
• Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
• Ours is less and less a free society.

O’Reilly Network — Free Culture: Lawrence Lessig Keynote from OSCON 2002

I highly recommend reading, hearing, or viewing the whole talk about a lot more than licensing that Lessig has given more than 100 times. It speaks to why licensing is the suck and presents some of the largest issues facing civilization today.