Openverse is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

for

open content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...

developed as part of the WordPress project. It searches Creative Commons licensed and

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

content from dozens of different sources. The software is licensed under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. Openverse indexes over 700 million items.

History

In February 2017

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

announced CC Search, an open source search engine for open content, and released a

beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

. A stable version of CC Search appeared in April 2019. In December 2020, after Creative Commons staff changes, CC Search and a few other projects no longer had the necessary staff capacity. Those services went into maintenance mode, with the services remaining available while development was suspended. In April–May 2021, Catherine Stihler (

) and

Matt Mullenweg Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984) is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is known as a co-founder of the free and open-source web publishing software WordPress, and the founder of Automattic. Early life and education Mu ...

(

WordPress Foundation WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, mailing lists, Internet f ...

, Automattic Inc.) announced that CC Search joined the WordPress project. Automattic hired key members of the CC Search team and sponsors their contributions to the project as part of th
Five for the Future
initiative. A new name was also introduced, Openverse. Openverse is the successor to CC Search, and is developed from the same code base of CC Search. It aims to be a broader open content search engine, continue development work and expand features. The

owns the Openverse

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

and its other

intellectual property rights Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

. In December 2020, the CC Search domain name was redirected to Openverse. In January 2022, Openverse launched a redesigned user interface and support for searching audio files. In February 2023, Openverse moved to the domain https://openverse.org and refreshed the user interface: adding a search history for recent searches. In September 2023, Openverse won the OE Awards for Excellence in Open Infrastructure.

Search engine sources

Openverse searches content from over 45 different media sources, including

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

Europeana Europeana is a web portal created by the European Union containing digitised cultural heritage collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe. It includes records of over 50 million cultural and scientific artefacts, brought togethe ...

, and

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

References

External links

* {{Official website
Openverse developer site

Openverse developer handbook

Openverse API

Openverse Git repository
Internet search engines Open content

History

Search engine sources

See also

References

External links