Philippine Commons

The Creative Commons Philippine jurisdictional licenses and the Philippine Commons have been successfully launched on Monday, 14 January 2008.

The series of talks, entitled “Strides towards Philippine Commons,” were warmly received by the participants, with ample inquiries thrown the way of the speakers. Prof. Engels Antonio,¹ of Bluepoint Institute of Higher Technology Foundation, ² provided the talk on “Linux and FOSS,” distinguishing the models of proprietary software, free software, and open source software, and emphasizing the community that develops in this kind of initiative. Prof. Leandre Andres S. Dacanay,³ President of the Philippine e-Learning Society,⁴ provided the talk on “Teaching and Learning through e-Learning.” He provided the full details in pursuing e-Learning systems, and the challenges and the solutions in meeting those challenges. Atty. Michael Vernon M. Guerrero, deputy project lead of Creative Commons Philippines, provided a small orientation on the thrust of the “Philippine Commons” and emphasized the need for collaboration among stakeholders, and persuading the participants to take the opportunity to develop the network of those, initially, who are present to grace the event. Participants were from various sectors. Besides the organizations represented by the speakers, representatives from the International Rice Research Institute, the Asian Institute of Management, the National Book Development Board of the Department of Education, Filipiniana.net / Wikipilipinas.org, Bayanihan Books, the Foundation for Media Alternatives, legal practitioners, and law students, among others, were present.

The launch proper was conducted in the Review Hall of the Arellano University School of Law. The Arellano Law Singers opened the launch with rendition of the invocation and the National Anthem. Atty. Erik Lazo provided the opening remarks. Three videos explaining the origin and the rationale of Creative Commons were presented. Atty. Guerrero explained the rationale for the porting process. Atty. Jaime Soriano, Atty. Gabriel dela Pena of the Arellano Law Foundation, and Dr. Florentino Cayco III of the Arellano University system proceeded with the launching of the CC-PH licenses and CC-PH related projects. The Arellano Law Singers sang two of the songs (”Lawyers’ Oath” and “Bill of Rights”) they have released under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Philippine licenses. Subsequently, Atty. de la Pena explained the role of the Arellano Law Foundation and the law school in Creative Commons. Dr. Cayco expressed the continuing support of the Arellano community in the endeavors of CC Philippines. Atty. Soriano closed, explaining further the Creative Commons’ mission and recognizing those who have attended the ceremony.

Seven bands performed during the CC Concert. Almost all the rock music pieces performed that night were originals of the bands, emphasizing the capacity of the Philippine youth to generate their own creative musical content. Eugene Marfil, of New Born Audio and a member of the popular Philippine band “True Faith” also sang two of his original works. The affair ended at 10:30 in the evening.

Photos and videos to follow.

1. Engels started playing with Linux® in 1991 and obtained his Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified Examiner (RHCX) certifications in 2002. He is in charge of Total Linux®, Linux Kernel Internals®, Perl & Python Programming, and Extreme PHP curriculum and instruction development of Bluepoint Foundation since 1999. Engels is also a Fedora Ambassador and an OpenVZ developer. [↩]
2. Bluepoint is a non-profit Open Source education and development center. It is the first organization in the Philippines that focuses on Linux and Open Source training [↩]
3. Andre finished his undergraduate degree from the University of Santo Tomas in Education, major in Computer Technology, and now pursuing his masteral studies on educational management. Currently, he is the Internal Project Manager of the Educational Technology Center, eLearning Access Program, also from the University of Santo Tomas.

   Serving as President of the Philippine eLearning Society (PeLS), he has been a participant in a number of international eLearning trainings. From the California Virtual Campus, USA, APEC eLearning Training by the Institute of APEC Collaborative Education in Pusan National University in Busan, Korea and eLearning Development and Implementation (eLDI), this time with the Global Campus 21 InWent-Germany.

   He was the conference chair of the recently concluded 6th National eLearning Conference with the theme “Learning About Technology, eLearning with technology for the Academe and Industry” last October 2007. His interests include educational technology, e-Learning and project management. [↩]

4. The Philippine eLearning Society (PeLS) was founded on July 30, 2003 in Manila with the objective of promoting substantive content, appropriate pedagogy, and appropriate use of technology for eLearning, guided by ongoing research activities. PeLS serves as a venue for: Promoting research on the effective use of eLearning, sharing of eLearning experiences, developing standards of excellence, promoting interoperability of eLearning systems, encouraging collaboration in the development of substantive content, cooperating with international eLearning groups, and promoting public awareness and appreciation of the nature and uses of eLearning. [↩]