Opening Up Design

One of the most fascinating aspects of open source is how its key ideas are being applied elsewhere. Obvious examples include open content - things like Wikipedia - open data, open access and open science, but there are also moves to apply them to more specialised business disciplines like design.

Recently, a book called “Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive” was published, which provided the first in-depth look at this world. As you might hope given its subject-matter, the essays that go to make it up are also being made available online under a Creative Commons licence - but with a twist:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Designs

Although Web pages are usually regarded as content, there can be a fair amount of code behind them too in the form of scripting and cascading style sheets (CSS). This means that there is a need for shared code in these areas, and the Open Design community aims to help out on the CSS side.

As an aside, it's interesting to note that the majority of stylesheets there use a Creative Commons licence, rather than the GNU GPL, say: this suggests people think of the code more as a form of content in this context. (Via James Tyrrell.)