The Linux of Beers?
July 26, 2005 – 3:19 pmA group of college students in Denmark has launched the first “open-source beer” by releasing the recipe and brand of their beer under the Creative Commons license. The name of the beer translates to “Our Beer” and is 6% alcohol by volume (slightly stronger than the average beer).
The Creative Commons license basically says anyone is free to use, copy, alter, or distribute the work as long as anything created as a result is also licensed under the Creative Commons license. Linux has achieved growing popularity partly as a result of its release under the GNU General Public License, which is similar to the Creative Commons in the sense that it guarantees freedom of use, alteration, and distribution.
One of the hopes of the “Our Beer” creators is to develop a community of people who continually improve the beer’s recipe and publicize their findings. Good times.
5 Responses to “The Linux of Beers?”
Free as in speech beer? To bad it’s not free as in beer beer.
Seriously, though, there are going to be way to many people making such jokes. And even far more too many people who’ll jump in with asinine comments like the above:
“It’s free?”
“Free as in beer.”
“Oh ho! Do you mean, free as in Our Beer beer, or do you mean free as is in frat beer beer?”
Dark days are upon us.
By MDA on Jul 26, 2005 at 5:52 pm
The problem with an open source beer is that people’s tastes vary considerably, so one person’s improvement will make things taste worse to someone else. I see this beer forking quite a bit.
By Adam on Jul 26, 2005 at 6:52 pm
I think you’re right, Adam. I’d imagine if this beer catches on we may have an “Our Beer Stout”, “Our Beer Pilsner”, etc.
I’m interested to see if any homebrewers take an interest in this particular recipe.
By jjk on Jul 27, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Basic beer recipes are already out there. Why use their recipe as a base that restricts you to sharing your recipe when you can start with so many others that don’t? Just my two cents.
As for free beer, my homebrew is free.
By Griztown on Aug 25, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Yes there are lots of free recipes out there on the net. www.beerrecipes.org is one of many.I have used several from the net to make beer.
Big Foamy Head
wwwibigfoamyhead.com
By Mike on Jul 31, 2007 at 1:34 pm