Mmmm, Open Source Beer

(via Musings of a Philosophical Scrivener….)

Danish students launch open source and shareware beer:

A group of IT-students fra the IT-University in Copenhagen has launched a new “open-source” beer, writes the technical journal Ingeniøren.

It is described by the students as “a great tasting energetic beer and it’s the world’s first open source beer! It is based on classic ale brewing traditions but with added guarana for a natural energy-boost.

Version 1.0 is a medium strong beer (6% vol) with a deep golden red colour and an original but familiar taste.”

Here’s more information from the Vores ØL (Our Beer) web site:

How can beer be open source?

The recipe and the whole brand of Our Beer is published under a Creative Commons license, which basically means that anyone can use our recipe to brew the beer or to create a derivative of our recipe. You are free to earn money from Our Beer, but you have to publish the recipe under the same license (e.g. on your website or on our forum) and credit our work. You can use all our design and branding elements, and are free to change them at will provided you publish your changes under the same license (“Attribution & Share Alike”).

Why beer?

Why not? We all like beer, and as an added bonus there is a legendary quote used to explain the concept of free software (now usually referred to as open source software):

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”.

We think that our open source beer is a nice twist on this quote, and we think it is interesting to see if our beer grows stronger in out in the free and perhaps one day becomes the Linux of beers. Who knows?

If you want to become a beer hacker, you can find the recipe here.

One thought on “Mmmm, Open Source Beer”

  1. They claim this is “the world’s first open-source beer”?

    Uh, no. People have been sharing, circulating and adapting each other’s beer recipes for ages, kids.

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