Openverse

Openverse is an open-source search engine for open content. It was made in the WordPress project. It searches Creative Commons licensed and public domain content from many sources. The software is licensed under the MIT License.

Openverse can search content among of 600 million items.

 History 
2010s
In February 2017 Creative Commons announced CC Search, an open source search engine for open content. They released a beta version. A stable version of CC Search appeared in April 2019.
2020s
In December 2020, after Creative Commons staff changes, CC Search and other projects no longer had enough staff. CC Search and others remained available but development was stopped. CC Search no more accepts new pull requests or made changes.

In April-May 2021, Catherine Stihler (Creative Commons) and Matt Mullenweg (WordPress Foundation, Automattic Inc.) announced that CC Search join to the WordPress project. Automattic paid to the Creative Commons for the search engine, hired key members of the CC Search team and sponsor their works to the project as part of Five for the Future commitment, which (search engine project) is, at the end of the arrangement, part of a WordPress project, not Automattic. A new name was also introduced, Openverse. Openverse is the successor to CC Search, developed of its code base. It aims to be a wider open content search engine. They will continue development work and expand features. WordPress Foundation owns Openverse trademark and its other intellectual property rights. Starting in December, CC Search users will be redirected to Openverse.

 Search engine sources 
Openverse searches content from many sources like Wikimedia Commons, Europeana and Flickr.

 Related pages 
 Open content

 References 
 Episode 8: The Commons of Images – WP Briefing, podcast episode of Openverse

 Other websites 


 Openverse developer site
 Openverse developer handbook
 Openverse API
 Openverse Git repositories

Category:Search engines
Category:Open content
Category:WordPress