In celebration of Creative Commons’ tenth anniversary, we asked various friends of CC to write about their favorite CC-licensed content. Today, blogger and science fiction author Cory Doctorow writes about the CC-licensed novels of one of the original cyberpunks.

Rudy Rucker’s Wetware books: the finest high-weirdness of the
golden age of cyberpunk

Rudy Rucker is one of the modern heroes of science fiction, one of the original cyberpunks. The early cyberpunks only had a few writers who could be meaningfully called punks — writers like John Shirley and Richard Kadrey — but there was only one who could truly be called cyber: Rudy Rucker. Rucker is a mad professor, a mathematician and computer scientist with a serious, scholarly interest in the limits of computation and the physics and mathematics of higher-dimension geometry.

But that’s just about the only thing you can describe as “serious” when it comes to Rucker. He’s a gonzo wildman, someone for whom “trippy” barely scratches the surface. His work is shot through with weird sex, weird drugs, weird brain chemistry, and above all, weird science.

The Ware Tetralogy is comprised of four novels written between 1982 and 2000, and I gobbled them up as they came out. They describe a future dominated by intensely weird and eerily scientifically plausible self-modifying cluster organisms that use evolutionary algorithms to bud offspring, rising to contend with humanity for dominance of the Earth and its envrions. They also get very, very high. On math. And they screw. A lot. Not like weasels. Not, in fact, like anything. Because Rudy Rucker is NOT LIKE ANYTHING.

Rucker is a tremendously prolific writer and editor who is publishing some of his finest work today (I’ve got his latest, the independently published Turing and Burroughs sitting at the top of my to-be-read pile as I write this). But the Ware books remain at the core of what I think of as the fiction that shaped who I am as a writer and thinker. And they’re available as a free, CC-licensed download (PDF).

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Creative Commons 3.0 Uganda licenses. Since joining the Creative Commons family in March of 2011, the Ugandan team has been incredibly busy: hosting the African Regional Meeting, pulling together petitions for the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization, and spreading the news about CC licenses. While doing all these great activities, they’ve also completed one of the last 3.0 ports.

The licenses are available through the license chooser, and like all of our licenses, are intended for use anywhere in the world. The Uganda 3.0 licenses are important as the first 3.0 licenses in Africa and one of the last 3.0 ports before the launch of the new 4.0 licenses.

Creative Commons would like to extend a huge thanks to the whole CC Uganda team; The National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU); the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD); and especially to Primah Kwagala for leading the porting team.

Read the full press release. (PDF)

I’m delighted to announce that Paul Brest has been elected chair of the Creative Commons board. Paul will begin as chair in December, coinciding with CC’s tenth anniversary celebrations.

Throughout his career, Paul has bridged the worlds of law, philanthropy, and academia, most recently as president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and, before that, dean of Stanford Law School. He’s widely recognized as an expert on constitutional law, problem solving and decision making, and philanthropic strategy, having written books and taught classes at Stanford on these subjects.

I can’t think of a better choice than Paul. He has that rare combination of strong instincts and the knowledge and rigor to back those instincts up. He’s the leader we need to carry CC into the next decade.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to recognize Joi Ito for his years of service as chair. During Joi’s time as chair, he’s helped CC grow as an organization, both in global influence and in its relevance to a changing technology landscape.

Please join me in thanking Joi and welcoming Paul.

A few weeks ago, CC received an interesting email from filmmaker Annie Berman. She told us about a CC-licensed documentary she’s been working on called The Faithful. The film explores issues of fandom and ritual, with Elvis Presley, Pope John Paul II, and and Princess Diana as its focal points.

As Annie was working the film, she contacted by Robert Sillerman — owner of the name, image, and likeness of Elvis Presley — for an interview. And suddenly, The Faithful was not only about the followers of iconic figures, but also about who owns their images.

THE FAITHFUL Teaser, as seen at REMIX NYC from Fish in the Hand Productions on Vimeo.

The film features an interview with CC founder Lawrence Lessig. In the clip below, Larry answers a pressing question: can Annie Berman make this film?

Excerpts from Lawrence Lessig Interview, THE FAITHFUL from Fish in the Hand Productions on Vimeo.

You can support the film on Kickstarter through the end of November. For more CC-licensed projects, visit our Kickstarter page.

Updated November 20: We incorrectly reported that Robert Sillerman initially contacted Annie Berman while she was working on the documentary. She contacted him.

Creative Commons has formed a new Science Advisory Board (SAB) to guide its science program and to provide overall strategic vision and focus. The SAB brings legal, institutional as well as domain-specific knowledge in the use and sharing of scientific tools and data. Our SAB is made up of eminent scholars and practitioners from different disciplines and four continents who have volunteered to provide us both the domain expertise as well as regional perspective to help create a truly globally responsive program. We are grateful to Gilberto Camara, Michael Carroll, Robert Chen, Juncai Ma, Peter Murray-Rust, Mackenzie Smith, and John Wilbanks for their time and insight.

Creative Commons works with scientists and institutions, providing education and outreach on the right technologies and licenses to maximize legal interoperability of scientific data and tools. Since most science is both cross-discipline and cross-border, legal interoperability of data and tools facilitates collaboration, enables reproducibility and verifiability, and makes it possible to extract a higher return on investment in publicly funded scientific programs through reuse of information.