There are better pictures at the BBC's
'Free' Danish beer makes a splash, but I'll go with the CNN story -
Students create 'open source' beer:
A free pint of beer may be a far-fetched dream for pint lovers, but a group of Danish technology students have come up with the next best thing -- a free recipe for people to make their own brew.
Using the open sourcing philosophy, the students have published a recipe for beer on the Internet, available without charge and open to improvements.
Open sourcing is the concept whereby people from all over the world collaborate voluntarily to produce computer programs in a market normally dominated by big corporations.
It became popular in the 1990s, and the best known examples is the Linux operating system for personal computers, which mimics Microsoft's Windows.
The 15 students, who are studying at Information Technology University in Copenhagen, produced approximately 100 liters (26 gallons) of "Vores Oel (Our Beer), version 1.0," and then made the recipe available to everyone on the Internet without charge.
"The idea was to translate the concept of open source to an analog product," Taw Klitgaard, a 26-year old student, told The Associated Press.
As with open source software, other brewers are free to tinker with the students' recipe.
But anybody who wants to sell a batch should reveal their changes and credit the students for the idea.
The students said the choice to make beer was inspired by a quote from Richard Stallman, founder of the open-source GNU software project, who said: "'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'."
I hope I won't be accused of being an old fogey, but I'm having a hard time following this. There's no paucity of
free beer recipes - they've been around for thousands of years. In fact, I'm a believer in
the beer theory of civilization. And the beer itself isn't free, so what's the big deal?
The students concocted their beer in the university cafeteria in December as part of a workshop on intellectual property rights.
Now that I understand! A college education once again proves useful. Here's
their web site.
