Creative Commons Search, the non-profit organization which offers over 500 million free-to-use images, is to join WordPress. The move secures the future of this significant source of free-to-use images on the web.
The announcement was made last week in a blog post by WordPress chief Matt Mullenweg, who said it was a response to the news that CC Search might close.
“I am a long-time supporter of Creative Commons and their influential work on open content licenses, and when we heard they were considering shutting down their CC Search engine we immediately started exploring ways we could keep it going.
I am eager to give a new home to their open search product on WordPress.org in continued commitment to open source freedoms, and providing this community resource for decades to come.”
Key members of the CC Search team have been hired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress and multiple other platforms, who will sponsor their contributions.
CC Search confirmed the news yesterday and was equally enthusiastic about the move to its new home. It said WordPress was “the perfect partner" to help keep the project growing and flourishing in the years ahead.
Both CC Search and Matt Mullenweg mentioned future work on audio and video search integration, carrying on the work done by CC Search on prototypes. CC Search said it was “deeply gratifying” that WordPress was committed to moving forward with this service and vision for growth.
According to a post on Make Wordpress.org, the new name for the product will be Openverse and it will eventually live at https://wordpress.org/openverse.
Mullenweg said he would share further details in a few weeks when everything was live and running on the WordPress site.
See also Wordtracker’s blog post for the best sources for royalty-free images, including CC Search.
